“Ha!” exclaimed Dobri, with a fierce look; “we can succour—”
“No, no, no,” interrupted the man: with a strange mixture of horror and fury in his blood-streaked face; “too late! too late!”
He raised his head, stammered as if attempting to say more, then, lifting both arms aloft, while the outspread fingers clutched the air, uttered an appalling cry, and fell flat on the ground.
“Not too late for revenge,” muttered the officer commanding the detachment. “Dress his wounds as quickly as may be, Mr Childers.”
He gave the necessary orders to get ready. In a few minutes the horses were saddled, and I had done what I could for the wounded man.
“You know the village he came from, and the way to it?” asked the commanding officer of Petroff.
“Yes, sir, I know it well.”
“Take the man up behind you, then, and lead the way.”
The troop mounted, and a few minutes later we were galloping over a wide plain, on the eastern verge of which the light of the new day was slowly dawning.
An hour’s ride brought us to the village. We could see the smoke of the still burning cottages as we advanced, and were prepared for a sad spectacle of one of the effects of war; but what we beheld on entering far surpassed our expectations. Harvests trampled down or burned were bad enough, so were burning cottages, battered-in doors, and smashed windows, but these things were nothing to the sight of dead men and women scattered about the streets. The men were not men of war; their peasant garbs bespoke them men of peace. Gallantly had they fought, however, in defence of hearth and home, but all in vain. The trained miscreants who had attacked them form a part of the Turkish army, which receives no pay, and is therefore virtually told that, after fighting, their recognised duty is to pillage. But the brutes had done more than this. As we trotted through the little hamlet, which was peopled only by the dead, we observed that most of the men had been more or less mutilated, some in a very horrible manner, and the poor fellow who had escaped said that this had been done while the men were alive.