We reached Krivodol at about five o'clock in the afternoon of July 14, and bivouacked near the village. It was a most picturesque little place, dotted down as it were in the middle of a sheltered valley which was watered by a little river. Here and there in the valley I saw curious mounds of earth about twelve feet high, and on inquiry I found that these were the tombs of Greek inhabitants who had settled here under the Byzantine Empire. After a successful forage for eatables in the village, I decided to bivouac on the top of one of these tombs which had a small hollow in the summit very enticing to a tired man; but before I wrapped myself in my great-coat for a sleep, the spirit of antiquarian research got hold of me, and I resolved to investigate the contents of my uncanny sleeping-place. By the offer of a few piastres apiece, I got a dozen men from my regiment with picks and shovels, and under my direction they dug down into the tumulus until they came to an old stone coffin containing some bones, two pretty Greek vases, and a few Byzantine coins. I left the bones in their place, and filled up the tomb again, taking with me the coins and the vases. The coins I afterwards gave away, and the vases, which I wrapped up in a sheepskin and tied to my saddle, were broken by a little accident which occurred next night on the march.
Before midnight the march was resumed, and for the remainder of the night and all next day the journey was continued, until we reached the village of Veltchiderma late in the afternoon. Weinberger and myself rode on in advance of the column to the village; and I was so thoroughly done up by the intense heat of the day and the exhaustion of the march, that I made straight for the Turkish khan or hotel, and after getting my horse something to eat I fell fast asleep in the only decent-sized room in the place. When I woke up, I found Osman Pasha and his staff in the room talking. I apologized for my presence, and he was most good-natured about it. "A soldier sleeps when he can, my boy," he said; "for he never knows when he may get another opportunity."
After my sleep I went down to the river and had a splendid swim, while the main body of the column, which extended several miles in length, arrived at the camping-ground. We were just preparing to make ourselves comfortable for the night, when I noticed that there was an unusual amount of excitement about my regiment; and I found to my disgust that an advanced guard of about seventeen hundred men, including my regiment, had orders to march right through the night, and push on to Plevna with the utmost possible speed. Osman Pasha had received news by telegraph that Nicopolis, which was his objective, had been taken by the Russians; and he made up his mind to march straight to Plevna, which was distant sixty-nine miles from Veltchiderma.
Oh, the monotonous horror of that march! We were dead tired when we started; and all through the dark night the men stumbled blindly on, forbidden to sing or even to speak, lest they might betray their presence to the scouts of the enemy. Silent, sleepless, footsore, sick for want of food, and faint for want of water, they marched on the long road to Plevna. Our commander was Emin Bey, and we had about fifty cavalry scouts with us, but no guns. I rode behind Weinberger, and at about two o'clock in the morning his horse pitched head foremost into a deep hole in the track, and I went after him. The two of us with our horses floundered out of the hole somehow or other, and we fortunately escaped with a few bruises; but my archæological treasures were lost, my Greek vases tied up in the sheepskin were smashed to atoms, and all my sacrilegious enterprise had gone for nothing.
Next night the men were so tired that we had to camp for a couple of hours in the open plain, as they could positively go no farther without a rest. My horse had had hardly anything to eat all day; so I rode away a hundred yards from the main body to a place where there was some good grass, and decided to let him have a feed. I tied the reins round my wrist, and went to sleep on the open plain. When I woke up all was silent, for the troops had gone, and so had my horse, while I knew that the country all round was swarming with Cossacks. It was not a nice predicament to be in; but luckily my horse, a beautiful little Arab stallion and very quiet, had not strayed far, and I easily caught and mounted him. Then I went in pursuit of the troops, and by a combination of luck and judgment I found them before I had ridden many miles.
We lost half a dozen men next day from sunstroke; and I could do nothing to save the poor fellows, who simply dropped in their tracks, and had to be left to die at the side of the road. We had hardly any water, and the men suffered terribly, the feet of numbers of them being quite raw with continual marching. I bound up their feet as well as I could with linen and old rags, but the men who wore sandals were much better off than those who wore boots; and the severity of the march may be guessed from the fact that, while the advanced guard consisted of one thousand seven hundred men when it started, there remained only one thousand three hundred when it reached Plevna. The others had dropped out on the way, and those that remained alive were picked up by the waggons following the main body behind us.
That afternoon we crossed the river Isker, the men wading through the water, which reached to their shoulders. Weinberger and I found that the troops were to halt for a couple of hours near a Bulgarian village, and we rode in to see if we could not get something to eat. Since leaving Widdin we had eaten nothing but a handful of kabobs, some maize plucked in the fields, and our hard biscuits.
The first thing that attracted my attention as I rode into that village was a flock of geese, and I remember saying to Weinberger, "Look here; I don't know what you are going to do, but I am going to have a goose for dinner." We saw a Bulgarian, who was evidently the proprietor of the geese; and Weinberger, who spoke Bulgarian fluently, opened pourparlers on the subject, and offered a medjidie apiece for two of the birds. The Bulgarian was obdurate, and refused to sell at any price. We talked to him politely, we urged the claims of hospitality, and we descanted upon the high price which we were prepared to give, but all to no purpose. The idea of losing a splendid dinner which was already practically in my grasp enraged me, and I made Weinberger cover the Bulgarian with his revolver while I secured the materials for a meal. With the revolver barrel levelled at his head, the Bulgarian was obliged to watch me sulkily as I chased the flock of geese with my drawn sword. The blade was as keen as a razor, and with a couple of swishing strokes I smote off the heads of two of the birds. We plucked them, cleaned them, and roasted them; Weinberger ate one, and I ate the other.
When we had finished this hearty meal, we found that the troops had gone on; so we rode after them, and travelled right through the night, finding ourselves next morning about four miles from Plevna. This was the sixth day after leaving Widdin, and we had done one hundred and twenty miles altogether, having covered the last seventy miles in three nights and two days of almost continuous marching—a feat which will bear comparison with the greatest forced marches on record. The men had subsisted on two biscuits per day with a very small allowance of water, and each man had carried seventy rounds of ammunition as well as his accoutrements. Few of them, moreover, had received a single penny of pay for the past twelve months, and yet they stuck to their work with indomitable pluck and good humour.
When we reached the bridge across the Vid, about three miles from our destination, on the morning of July 18, the column could go no farther, and we halted for the last time in sight of the minarets of Plevna.