"God rest them," said I, lifting my cap, as I leaned on the trumpeter's arm.
"Ay, sir," said he, sadly; "the next trumpet they hear will be a louder one than Bill Jones's!"
CHAPTER LII.
Then I thought of one fair spring-time,
When she placed her hand in mine,
And, half-silent, said she loved me,
And, half-blushing, seemed divine.
Then I thought of that same winter,
When the earth was dead and cold;
Fit time, in sooth, to marry one
She worshipped for his gold.
I had been some days in Messirie's Hotel, at Pera, before I realized or quite became reconciled to the idea that I was going home on sick leave, worn in mind and body, and smarting still with many wounds, for some of the lance prods had gangrened, the iron having been, perhaps, rusty. Many other officers were also at Messirie's, on their way home, some with amputated limbs, but all leaving the army with regret. All were pale and lean enough, with bronzed faces and bushy beards, their red shell-jackets or blue surtouts out-at-elbows, threadbare, patched, and stained by the mud of the trenches, and there were one or two lisping idiots, with flyaway whiskers, hair divided in the centre, and yaw-haw tones, whose "pwivate affairs had become wemawkably urgent!"
I had with me poor Willie Pitblado, whose left leg was well-nigh useless now. No surgeon had succeeded in extracting the ball; their attempts had produced torture, which brought on a low fever, and Willie was going home with me now—only, I feared, to die.
And now, on the last evening of this most memorable year, I sat alone, muffled in my cavalry cloak, looking from the hotel window down a long and narrow street, paved with rough, round stones, where the humauls, or Turkish porters, British tars, half-furious with raki, Zouaves, with cigar in mouth and hands in pockets, dragomans, with pistol and sabre, indolent, sensual, and brutal Osmanli soldiers, and other nationalities and costumes, made up a strange and varied scene. From another window I could see Stamboul, its flat roofs, round domes, its mosques and minarets, stretching in the distance far away; the Golden Horn; with the three-deckers of the Sultan lying idly at anchor; and the new bridge that spans the harbour; and, over all, the weird-like glories of a crimson moon.
The December twilight stole on, and, as I mused, it seemed but yesterday since all those lancers who had died of cholera at Varna or elsewhere, and those whom I had seen cast into the great trench, had been alive, and riding by my side.
The embarkation of the wounded at Balaclava harbour, whither they had been borne on stretchers, minus legs and arms, hands and feet, with faces pale, slashed, gashed, and battered; our British men-of-war, the Sanspareil, Tribune, Sphinx, and Arrow, ranged in line, with open ports to sweep the valley; all the episodes of our departure—the somewhat mournful cheers given by the seamen as our transport, the Napoleon III., of Leith, got up her steam and cleared the harbour—cheers to which we could scarcely respond; the receding shores, where the iron voice yet rang the knell of many a human life from battery and bastion; the last rays of the sun, as they lit up the impending bluffs of Cape Aya, and ruddied all the rocks of red and white marble that guard the rugged coast, and repel the storms of the Euxine; all these, as they had melted into sea and sky, seemed like an old dream now, and, battered in body and broken in spirit, I was seated alone in Messirie's Frankish hotel, on my way home!
Well, well! For weeks past I had been as useless at Balaclava as at the Hospital of Scutari, from whence I had been transferred to the suburb of Pera. I had been unable to share in the two battles of Inkermann, in both of which the Russians were totally defeated, and in the last of which our losses were fearful; and I had no share in the battle of the Ovens, on the 20th of November. By landing at Scutari on the 13th, I escaped the terrible hurricane by which so many of the shipping perished in the Black Sea, and by which the survivors of their crews were subjected to be mercilessly massacred by the Russians.