"Hang the Commissioner," replied the young man, irreverently. "Let him give me something worthy of doing, and I'll do it. Get up a war, say against Austria or Turkey, the latter preferred; show me the enemy and you'll find me to the fore. But this playing at soldiers; this marching and counter-marching; this inspection of kit, and attendance at parade,—I'm growing wearied of it. I'm rusting here,—I, whose motto is 'Action.' Am I to remain for ever in these cursed malarial isles, a mere drilling machine?"
"The drillings pay when comes the day," retorted the colonel, so surprised at this betrayal into rhyme that he repeated it. "And what's this new craze of yours for Dalmatia? Wild outlandish place! Nobody ever goes there."
"Precisely my reason for visiting it," returned Paul, lunging with his sabre-point at a mosquito that had just settled on a panel of the wall. "Why go where everybody goes? My tastes run in the direction of the odd, the romantic, the wild, the—anything that's opposed to the common round of existence. I fancy I shall find it in Dalmatia."
"You'll find yourself in the hands of banditti. That's where you'll be. The mountains swarm with them. And I'm damned if I'll pay your ransom," cried the colonel with returning wrath, as he recalled the liberality and frequency with which Paul drew upon his purse. "Remember the case of young Lennox, and the severed ear sent to his father in an envelope. Ten thousand florins! That's what the old chap had to pay to get his son out of the clutches of the infernal scoundrels, and never a thaler has he been able to recover from the Austrian Government. And now you would run yourself and me into a similar noose!"
"Banditti won't fix my ransom at so high a rate. Besides," added Paul, critically contemplating the Damascene inlaying of his sabre, "they've first got to take me."
"Well, if they'll fix it at what you're worth," said his uncle, grimly, "I shall not object to the payment."
Ultimately Paul obtained the desired furlough by resorting to his usual threat; he would sell his commission, buy a string of camels, and spend the rest of his life in trying to discover the sources of the Nile.
Thus it came to pass that a few days after this interview young Captain Cressingham embarked on board the Austrian Lloyd's steamer Metternich, bound for Zara, the clean, well-built capital of Dalmatia, directing his voyage to this city in order to renew old memories with some former college-chums, who were about to pass their summer holiday in its neighborhood.
Finding that he had anticipated the arrival of his friends by a few days, Paul resolved to spend the interval in taking a pedestrian tour southward as far as Sebenico: and accordingly he set off, without either companion or servant, and wearing his uniform, partly because as a soldier he was proud of it, partly because experience had taught him that in these eastern regions a uniform inspires respect in the minds of innkeepers, if not in those of banditti.
He passed the first night of this journey at a wayside hostelry.