Jack handed his brother's letter to me. It ran thus:—
MY DEAR JACK,—
Allow me to introduce to you and to your brother officers of the old —th Captain Osman Rioni (late of the—I am sorry to say it—Russian service), who has been for some time in London teaching our Life Guards the lance exercise, and who for the last three months has been the lion of the club-houses. He arrived among us a staid and respectable Mohammedan, very prone to sit cross-legged on the floor, to dip his fingers in the gravy, and to grasp his knife if you gave him a slice of ham with his fowl; but he leaves us much addicted to balls, vingt un, champagne suppers, the polka, and the waltz. In short, in one season, we have polished him up in good style, and completed an education which had been somewhat neglected during his rural life among the Caucasus. You, perhaps, know the history of himself and his horse—for the morning papers get hold of everything. Conyers of the Blues offered him £500 for the nag; but he won't sell it for any known amount of the ready. Look at its legs and chest; I never saw such an animal! The captain has been an honorary member of our mess while in London—a hint this, for your fellows. He is now on his way home to the Kuban (wherever the devil that may be), and so you gentlemen of the Line in Gibraltar must look to the state of his exchequer, and pass him on to the next station, as Conyers has given him letters to some of the Rifles at Malta. I could easily have procured him a troop in our new Turkish contingent; but home he must and shall go, he says, and his own story will best let you know why. To-morrow our battalion will change its quarters, and commence the arduous march from St. John's Wood Barracks to those in Portman-street, and from thence to Trafalgar-square, and I shall follow in my cab; but you may see me ere long, for I am to sail with the next draught of ours for the Crimea, where the shiny splendour will be taken out of our Brahmins in the muddy trenches—ugh! Give my remembrance to Dick Ramble—ask him what his next book is to be about; and so, my dear Jack,
I remain, &c., &c.
The wishes of Sir Henry, and the efforts he and his brother officers of the Grenadier Guards (most of whom will remember the affair I allude to) made it imperative upon "Ours" not to be behind them in kindness to this stranger.
Jack and I promised to leave nothing undone to serve him on our arrival at Gibraltar, and assured him that we would see sufficient funds raised to send him either to Malta, or by steamer straight to Constantinople. His ignorance of English and Spanish had sadly puzzled the brain of our poor Circassian, who had landed with his horse and baggage at San Lucar, believing it to be Gibraltar, and had thus lost several days, and, what was of more consequence, much of his money; so that his mind was full of anxiety as to the future, and how his horse—his Zupi—for they seemed one, like a centaur, were to reach that mighty mountain range that lies between the Euxine and the Cape of Alpcheron; and which, with all its black forests, wild rocks, and snowy peaks was his beloved home; the altar of oriental independence—the barrier of the Eastern world against the encroaching Kuos.
We supped together in the cabin; and while the Spanish passengers were all smoking or asleep on the benches and lockers, we prevailed upon the Circassian, over a bottle of good wine, to inform us how he came to serve in the Russian cavalry, and why he declined Sir Harry's apparently advantageous offer of a Captain's commission in our Turkish contingent—a service for which he seemed so admirably fitted, and in which he might have won honour and distinction; at least such distinction as John Bull awards to those who are not on the staff, and have no ministerial interest.
He shook his head sadly, as I said something to this purpose, and bowing, gave me a pleasant smile.
"When you have heard me, you will understand more fully that the only place for me is my native land—that home which is now so far off, that when I trace upon a map the extent of sea and shore that lie between its hills and me, my heart grows faint and sick; but patience yet awhile, and one day I shall stand again an the black rugged mountains of Kushaa, and see at my feet far down below, the fertile plains of Georgia and Mingrelia. Zupi will snuff the pure air of these Alpine peaks, and toss his proud mane on the wind; strong warriors, in their shirts of mail, will be riding by my side; the Albanian musket and the Tartar bow will be there, as we survey the long dark lines that mark upon the green summer fields, or it may be the winter snow, the columns of the Russian Emperor—columns that advance but to defeat and death; for in thousands, yea, hundreds of thousands, have they come to war against us, and to perish on the Circassian hills, until the very soil has been drenched in their blood, and fattened by the bones of men and horses! But my emotions carry me away, gentlemen, and I am forgetting my own story."
"Ah—yes, the story," said Jack, refilling the stranger's glass, and pushing the decanters towards me, while our new friend began, as nearly as I can remember, in the following words.