In the Track of the Troops

by R. M. Ballantyne

No notice was taken of this except by a man who sat down on the floor beside his dead commander, to bandage his own wounded arm. Before he had finished his task, a shout from his comrades told that danger approached. Immediately the whole party rushed out of the hut by a back door. At the same instant the front door was burst open, and a soldier leaped in.

It was evident to Lancey that, in the midst of smoke and turmoil, a mistake had been made, for the man who appeared was not a Russian but a Turk. He was followed by several companions.

Casting a savage piercing look on Lancey, and apparently not feeling sure, from his appearance, whether he was friend or foe, the man presented his rifle and fired. The ball grazed Lancey’s chest, and entering the forehead of the old woman scattered her brains on the wall.

For one moment Lancey stood horror-struck, then uttered a roar of rage, rose like a giant in his wrath, and seized a rifle which had been dropped by one of the fugitive soldiers. In an instant the bayonet was deep in the chest of his adversary. Wrenching it out, he swung the rile round and brought the butt down on the skull of the man behind, which it crushed in like an egg-shell. Staggered by the fury of the onslaught, those in rear shrank back. Lancey charged them, and drove them out pell-mell. Finding the bayonet in his way, he wrenched it off, and, clubbing the rifle, laid about him with it as if it had been a walking-cane.

There can be no question that insanity bestows temporary and almost supernatural power. Lancey was for the time insane. Every sweep of the rifle stretched a man on the ground. There was a wavering band of Turks around him. The cheers of victorious Russians were ringing in their ears. Bullets were whizzing, and men were falling. Shelter was urgently needful. Little wonder, then, that one tall sturdy madman should drive a whole company before him. The Russians saw him as they came on, and cheered encouragingly. He replied with savage laughter and in another moment the Turks were flying before him in all directions.

Then Lancey stopped, let the butt of his rifle drop, leaned against the corner of a burning house, and drew his left hand across his brow. Some passing Russians clapped him on the back and cheered as they ran on to continue the bloody work of ameliorating the condition of the Bulgarian Christians.

Nearly the whole village was in flames by that time. From the windows of every house that could yet be held, a continuous fire was kept up. The Russians replied to it from the streets, rushing, in little bands, from point to point, where shelter could be found, so as to escape from the withering shower of lead. Daring men, with apparently charmed lives, ran straight up in the face of the enemy, sending death in advance of them as they ran. Others, piling brushwood on a cart, pushed the mass before them, for the double purpose of sheltering themselves and of conveying combustibles to the door of the chief house of the town, to which most of the inhabitants, with a company of Turks, had retired.

But the brushwood proved a poor defence, for many of those who stooped behind it, as they ran, suddenly collapsed and dropped, as men are wont to do when hit in the brain. Still, a few were left to push the cart forward. Smoke disconcerted the aim of the defenders to some extent, and terror helped to make the firing wild and non-effective.

Against the town-house of the village some of the Russians had already drawn themselves up so flat and close that the defenders at the windows could not cover them with their rifles. These ran out ever and anon to fire a shot, and returned to reload. Meanwhile the brushwood was applied to the door and set on fire, amid yells of fiendish joy.

Lancey had followed the crowd almost mechanically. He had no enemy—no object. The Turk, as it happened, was, for the time being, his friend.