The presence of Karolyi, his companionship and our brotherly love, had alone sustained me thus far; now he was gone, and I was alone in the world; but there was at least one consolation: he had died the death of a warrior, with one hand on his bridle, and the other on his weapon; he had fallen, like his father's son, in battle with the enemies of his country, but he had found a tomb far from his father's grave, and far from the banks of the Kisselbash River.
Three days I lay without food, save a little wild honey, and without repose in that Lithuanian forest, and careless whether I lived or died; for want, misery, privation and mental agony had broken my spirit, and destroyed alike every purpose, hope, and reflection. There I prayed to the only Prophet of God, and remembered with growing trust that in the blessed Koran, he enjoins us to seek aid with perseverance; and I implored him to deliver me, even as the Lord divided the sea of Kolzom with his hand to let his people pass, and thereafter drowned the Egyptian host; and the Prophet heard me; for even while I prayed with my bare head in the dust, there chanced to pass that way a poor Tartar who dwelt on the skirts of the forest, and who had come hither to cut wood.
He heard me address the Prophet, and remembering the faith of his fathers, felt his heart moved within him; so he had compassion upon me, and took me to his hut, which, like all the Tartar dwellings, was little better than a rabbit-hole, burrowed on the face of a hill, with a rude verandah in front. Fortunately it lay in a wild and secluded place; so I dwelt for some days in safety with this good man, who guided me across the plains of Grodno, until I passed the Prussian frontier, when I knelt with my face to the east, and gave thanks to Heaven—thanks that I was safe from Russia, although eight hundred miles lay between me and the hills of my beloved Circassia.
Zupi, my horse, the noble animal which had borne me this incredible distance, was my first care, and to procure new garments in lieu of the tattered uniform of the Tenginski Hussars was the second; and intent only on reaching Britain, which was about to declare war against Russia, I travelled through part of Prussia by railway, a mode of locomotion, which I there saw for the first time, and which filled me with wonder and awe.
On reaching that kingdom, I thought my troubles were at an end; but there, alas! I found myself accused of a murder, stripped of the little sum I had about me, separated from Zupi, cast into prison, and in danger of being hanged; or what was worse, sent back to the Russian General Todleben, who commanded at Grodno. It happened thus.
I travelled towards Dantzig in a second-class carriage, in which the only other passenger was a pale and careworn young man, whose profusion of beard, braided coat, and small cap, with its square peak, gave him somewhat the aspect of a student. Taciturn and thoughtful, and being full of astonishment at the speed with which we swept over plain and valley, across rivers and under mountains—travelling as it were on the skirts of a whirlwind—I did not address my companion, who after smoking a large pipe for some time, covered his head with his cloak, and threw himself at full length along the seat, where he lay, long, as I thought, asleep. A jolt of the train threw him on the floor, and perceiving that he lay motionless and still, I hastened to lift him; but how great was my emotion, to find my hands covered with blood—for this silent fellow-passenger was a suicide, who had cut his throat from ear to ear, by a knife, which he grasped in his now rigid hand.
I endeavoured to lower the windows, but I knew not the way; so I dashed one to pieces, and cried aloud to the guards or drivers—I know not which you name them; but I was unheeded, and still this apparently infernal vehicle, in which I was enclosed with the bloody corpse, swept on, screaming, whistling, jarring, clanking, smoking, and whirling over wood and plain, over the roofs of towns, past the weathercocks of churches, and the tops of lofty trees, with a speed and din that would have carried terror and dismay to the hearts of a Circassian host, and would have swept Kurds and Kalmucks to the furthest confines of Asia.
At Dantzig the train arrived in due time, and the doors were opened by the conductors. I was found with "the murdered man;" my recent cries were attributed to him; the broken windows to his dying struggle, for my hands were cut and covered with blood! The Prussian gallows threatened me on one hand and the Russian knout upon the other. I was a poor unfriended foreigner, in a land of spies, suspicion, and police agents; and in my own defence had not one word to urge, for I was ignorant of the language. But fortunately next day, a letter was found on the person of the deceased, who proved to be a French artist, announcing his intention of destroying himself, and adding, that "when he had no longer a sou, it was thus a Frenchman should die—Vive la France! Vive le diable!"
This relieved me, and explained the whole affair; but the Prussian gens-d'armes kept my purse, as they said, to pay "all contingencies;" and had not the captain of a large French ship taken pity upon me, and brought me and my horse to London—the capital of Europe—I must have begged for bread in the streets of Dantzig, and had to sell my beloved Zupi to save the noble animal from starvation.
Finding myself in the great city of London, I was likely to be in greater distress than when in the vast forest of Lithuania; for in London the whole population live in an atmosphere of snares, suspicion, and mistrust, every man viewing his neighbour as one who has a design upon him. Again I was starving, for the little sum with which the French captain supplied me was spent upon Zupi, by whose side I always slept at night in an old cart-shed. But remembering that by birth and habit I was a soldier, I applied to the officers of the Household Brigade; some of these smiled, and shook their heads doubtfully, until Sir Henry Slingsby laid before them my commission in the Tenginski Hussars; it was fringed with silver, and signed by the Emperor Nicholas Paulovitch. Then they had a fellow feeling for me, and treated me with a kindness, the memory of which fills my soul with gratitude; for never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget it, or omit to pray for the good and brave Ingleez.