"Your Highness, I should like to shoot them all; and probably in your position we should have done it." Strogue had not travelled for nothing, and he held up his thumb for me not to contradict him. "You are the great civilizing power, as England begins at last to acknowledge. We did not come here with the audacity to think that your Highness would help us in a private matter which does not concern your authority. But we know that this Lesghian chief, although he was compelled to side with Shamyl in his boyhood, and has paid the just penalty by long exile, is now the warmest friend of your great Empire. The object for which he has returned is this, to bring the barbarians into peaceful ways, and make them good Russian subjects, able, and at the same time glad, to pay good taxes. This gentleman with me, of the highest English family, is an intimate friend of Sûr Imar, and he will confirm every word I have said. Speak up, Sir George, and tell his Highness what you know."
"How many times more am I to be Sir George?" I muttered to myself in English. And then as the Prince's eyes fell upon me, I said very bravely, "It is so, your Highness." For everything was true, except perhaps about the taxes.
"And will the Commander-in-Chief allow," cried Strogue, getting stronger in his eloquence, "a faithful and fervent Russian subject to be murdered by barbarous Ossets, the most cantankerous and anti-Russian tribe remaining in the Caucasus?"
The Captain made a true hit here. The gorgeous decorations rose on the ample bosom of the Prince, and his strong eyes flashed, as if in battle. But a Russian of high rank keeps his head, and he answered rather formally.
"As I said before, I cannot interfere. But in case of any savage tumult, I will give you a letter to the officer on duty in the Kazbek district, which you will not present unless needful. And now, gentlemen, I wish you well. You must bear in mind that you go with your lives in your hands, and we are not responsible. There is a little band of your countrymen on the northern side of Kazbek, who hold our permission to quest for minerals. Two of them were frozen to death last winter, through their own imprudence. But that has not prevented more from coming, in the manner of your country. You may find them of service to you in the matter of supplies. Farewell."
We took our leave with many thanks, not daring to put any further questions, although we concluded that he knew more than he saw fit to tell us. An officer brought us the promised letter, and looked at us very curiously, as if we were even more insane than the English race in general. I wanted Strogue to question him; but he said that it would be a breach of etiquette, and might set the Commander against us. So we made our bows, and went back to our inn, which was one of the queerest places ever seen.
And this reminds me that I may have been expected to say something about the many noble and wonderful sights of our long and tedious journey. But the plain truth is, that they passed me by, without leaving any clear impression, or even creating the interest which at any other time must have swallowed me. I looked upon the grandest scenery of the world, without even thinking of its grandeur, caring for nothing but to leave it behind, as another obstacle gone by. Scarcely would I even lift my eyes to the majesty of giant Tau, or peak that towered in dazzling white (like the hand of God spread on the heavens), or the sombre awe of mountain forest, deep with impenetrable gloom. Yet in after times all these came gliding along the slides of memory, and now and then they stand and hold me, when I want to think of something else.
But what we had to think of now was to get along the roadless roads from Tiflis into the black abysses and white steeps of the mountain range. Many of the passes still were blocked, although the strong sun scorched our skin, and the road was swamp or flood, whenever it was not crag or boulder. Strogue, being accustomed to such doings, took them with grim philosophy; and I cared little what they were, except for the delay they caused. The Prince most kindly sent a couple of Cossacks for our escort, and we had four men with their hired ponies, as well as an interpreter, for Strogue might often be at fault even with the Lesghian tongue, and we might visit places where that and Russian were of small avail.
So bad was the season, and the ways so roundabout and rugged, that not until the 3d of May did we enter the deep defile which leads to the foot of the crag of Karthlos. We threaded the narrow pass, and looked up at the fearful heights, from which those playful children fell, when frisking on their little legs among the treacherous snow-drift. And then we saw the rocky elbow of the dark ravine where Imar's father Dadian fell to the stealthy shot of Rakhan. The lonely gorge, where a man felt half afraid to provoke an echo, seemed to be formed by nature for the darkest deeds her sons can do. While the pale slant of declining sunshine, webbed with quivering vapour, here and there came partway down the walls of rent and jagged rock, but nowhere reached the bottom. There was not a sound to make us think of life in this unfathomable grave; even the Cossacks shuddered mutely under the gloomy chill of awe.