Neither he nor I knew the other's language; his capitans, fiarooschicks, and praperchicks (i.e., lieutenants and ensigns) were in the same condition. Thus we had no means of communication, save by clinking our glasses, and exchanging cigarettes, nods, winks, and grins.
An old Times newspaper was given to me. It was dated months back, and detailed the battle of Oltenitza; but its columns had been carefully purged by the censor of everything political—an ingenious process achieved by gutta-percha and ground glass.
The reader has, perhaps, heard of how a farrier-sergeant of the Emperor Alexander's Dragoon Guards predicted the destruction of the grand army of Napoleon I., on being shown a horseshoe dropped by the retreating cavalry of France.
"What! not frosted yet," he exclaimed, professionally, "and the snow to fall to-morrow! Holy St. Sergius! these fellows don't know Russia!"
Vladimir Dahl was the son of the farrier-sergeant who thus predicted the downfall of the enemies of Russia; and he was more proud of his father than if he had been, like the best of the Muscovite nobles, descended from Ruric the Norman.
The days passed slowly away. I might as well have been dumb, having no one to converse with. I could not pass the castle gates, as every avenue, angle, and outlet was guarded by snub-nosed Muscovites, in grey capotes, with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets.
Hope of escape as yet I had none!
On the morning of the fourth day, a mounted Paulowna hussar delivered at Kourouk a letter, with a shred of the feather of the quill with which it had been written inserted among the wax of the seal—a Russian mode of signifying speed.
It announced the arrival of General Baur, with all his staff. Baur had been wounded in the encounter with our troops at Khutor-Mackenzie; and I was very well pleased when the evening of the same day saw him ride into Kourouk, of which I was heartily weary; and I was not without hopes that the general, on remembering how we had released him after the Alma, might do something for me in the way of exchanging or paroling me; and in his aide-de-camp, the gay young Captain Anitchoff, of the Maria Paulowna Hussars, I was glad to see a face that I knew, and to meet one with whom I could converse.
The general had been wounded by a musket shot in the bridle arm. It was severely inflamed. Ease had been recommended, so he had come to spend a week or so at Kourouk, which was in his own military district; and on the very evening of his arrival, Anitchoff brought me an invitation to dine with him.