'I have been idle long enough,' answered Trist, in a voice laden with suppressed excitement. 'I cannot stand it any longer.'
He closed his note-book, drew the elastic carefully over it, and raised his eyes to the strange, dishevelled group of men before him. The chief of this wonderful staff, Osman himself, held out his hand without a word, took the book, and dropped it into the pocket of his long blue cloak.
Already the call of the bugle told that preparations were in course—that the commander's orders were being executed.
* * * *
Before darkness lowered over the land the redoubt was again in the hands of the Turks. This is a matter of history—as also the fact that the flower of the Russian army lay all round Plevna for three months afterwards, and never gained an advantage equal to that which they had held for twenty-four hours. Osman was impregnable—Plevna unassailable, except by the slower weapon of bodily hunger—grim starvation.
It was nearly seven o'clock on the evening of the twelfth of September, before Tefik Bey, the grave young chief of staff, found time to visit the great double redoubt which had cost the Russian army over five thousand lives.
Accompanied by an orderly bearing a simple paraffin hurricane-lamp, he made his laborious way over the heaps of dead. Upon the hill above the redoubt the Turks lay in thousands. There were rows of them, shoulder to shoulder as they had charged, marking the effect of Skobeleff's terrible volleys. Below the defence, upon the lower slope, the Russians covered the earth, and in the redoubt itself Moslem and Christian lay entangled in the throes of death. They were literally piled on the top of each other—a very storehouse of the dead—for the Russians had fought all day standing upon the bodies of the slain. Now the ready Turks trampled countryman and foe alike beneath their feet, for it was by no means certain that an attempt might not be made at once to regain the coveted position.
While crossing a ditch, that had been hastily cut by the Russians, Tefik stopped suddenly.
'Give me the lantern!' he said, in a peculiar short way.
Then he stooped over the body of a man who lay face downwards upon the blood-soaked turf.