"Jocelyn has been down to the harbour," said he, "and he has seen Berkeley's yacht. She is now at anchor close to the old ruined castle, and Scriven has boarded her."
"See him at once, Jack, like a good fellow," I exclaimed. "Delay is fatal with one so slippery."
"All right! I'm off!" replied Studhome, seizing his forage-cap, and in a few minutes after I saw him galloping past the redoubts of Kadokoi; for we, the cavalry, with the Highland brigade, were not exactly quartered in Balaclava, but among some vineyards two miles distant from the harbour-head in the direction of Sebastopol.
Lucky for us, too, that we were so, as the harbour of Balaclava was full of dead troop-horses, whose swollen bodies were used as stepping-stones in the shallow places, while all the ground about the little town was full of half-buried soldiers, whose feet, fingers, and fleshless skulls stuck through their shallow graves.
CHAPTER XLIX.
To-morrow? O, that's sudden! Spare him:
He's not prepared for death! Even for our kitchens
We kill the fowl of season. Shall we serve Heaven
With less respect than we do minister
To our gross selves? Good, good, my lord, bethink you:
Who is it that hath died for this offence?
There's many have committed it.
SHAKSPEARE.
"I have been on board the yacht, Newton. I have seen Berkeley and Scriven there, and the matter is all but arranged," said Studhome, as he tossed aside his whip and forage-cap, seated himself on the edge of my camp bed, and proceeded to light a cigar.
Much though I longed for it, the information gave me a species of nervous start.
"Thanks, Jack. He will come to the scratch, then?"
"Like the muff, or rather the knave he is, in a fashion of his own. I found him surrounded by every luxury on board his yacht, and she is a beauty—the Seapink of Cowes. He was lounging indolently on a rich sofa, in a velvet smoking-cap and gorgeous brocade dressing-gown, tied with yellow silk tassels. By Jove, the fellow was as grandly got up as a Highland piper, or Solomon in all his glory; and he and Scriven were having tiffin—not as we do here, on green coffee and pounded biscuit, but on preserved grouse pie, with iced hock and seltzer water. They asked me to join them, and offered me the chair, which had just been vacated by a—a—pretty Greek girl whom he has on board. His countenance fell rather when he heard my spurs rattling on the steps of the companion-way, and lower still when he discovered my errand. Before our Sybarite of a brother officer, with his bandolined moustaches and exquisite toilette, I was weak enough to feel almost ashamed of my tattered blue surtout, with its frayed frog lace."