"You've not missed much so far. We've been frizzling and grizzling all this time. Never seen the ghost of a Russian so far."
"Waiting for us, I expect. Can't get on without cavalry."
"If that's what we've been waiting for we're all mighty glad to see you. All this hanging about is the hardest work I've ever done yet."
"Where are you living?"
"Up on the hill there. You'll be going on to Devna, I expect. That's twenty miles further up."
"I've got to look after the horses. They've done splendidly so far. Not lost a leg. We'll have a talk when we knock off." And Jim turned to the congenial work of seeing his equine friends safely ashore.
When he had seen them all picketed on the stretch of turf near the beach, and enjoyed for a time their rollings and stretchings and kickings of cramped heels, he walked away up the shore, had his first delicious swim in the Black Sea, and then made his way into the dirty little town and struggled slowly through its narrow streets, packed with such a heterogeneous assortment of nationalities as his wondering eyes had never looked upon before.
Guardsmen, Fusiliers, Riflemen, Highlanders, Dragoons, and Hussars, Lancers, Chasseurs, Zouaves, Artillerymen, and Cantinières; Greeks, Turks, Italians, Smyrniotes, Bashi-Bazouks, and nondescripts of all shapes and sizes; dark, windowless little shops with streaming calico signs in many languages, offering for sale every possible requirement from pickles to saddlery, but especially drinks; a slow-moving, chattering, chaffering, and occasionally quarrelling, mob of shakos, turbans, fezes, Highland bonnets, képis, and wide-awakes, with bearded faces under them in every possible shade of brown and mud-colour,--no wonder it took Jim a long time to get through.
But he got out into the open country at last, and breathed clean air again, and climbed the hill and found his way to Jack's tent, and demanded something to drink.
"What a place!" he gasped. "Never saw such a sight in my life!"