Even as Rachel, Russia mourned for her sons and would not be comforted. The huge, beaten army of Menschikoff, retreating down the great trunk road towards Sivernaia, had left a shattered brigade of Imperial Guards and a regiment or two of cavalry encamped upon the Belbek. And that piercing “Oi-oi” is the wail of the mujik, who, soldier though he be, is always a peasant at heart. It was the Cossack of the Eastern Caucasus who cried: “Ai-ai-ai-dalalai!”
“Mary be about us! What’s that?”
The woman rose up from her task, dropping the frizzling meat upon the dull red embers. She plucked back the shawl that hooded her, listened intently, and said, with her hollowed hand yet cupping the cocked ear:
“Musha yarra! Is it savigees they do be callin’ thim?... May I never break a pratie more av they’re not keening their dead like dacent Irish. Do ye not hear thim? Och! och! your souls to glory!” she cried. “What are we fighting yees for at all, at all? For a dirty baste of a Turk that spit on the Holy Crucifix, an’ shaves his skull as naked as me hand!”
They grew to like the snub-nosed, flat faced Ivan or Piotr in the coarse gray overcoat. The man of dogged imperturbable endurance, who lived on thin kvas and black bread. Who stood up in blocks as big as Trafalgar Square to be shot at. Who advanced on the bayonets or faced the batteries with the bravery of unquestioning obedience; and regarded his Little Father, the Tsar, as the Vicar upon earth of the Great Father in Heaven.
The Ivans and Piotrs, aware of their Tsar’s weakness for lightning journeys and anonymous visits of inspection, believed him to be constantly with their Army, though unseen. Over many a bivouac-fire they whispered of a huge officer who sometimes rode with the Headquarters Staff, but oftenest marched with their battalions; a man whose impassive stolid face, with the stony blue, prominent eyes bulging under the spiked black leather helmet, was reproduced in the official colored print that hung in every barrack-room. He had captured the imagination of his people in the Cholera year of ’46, when he thrust his way through the panic-stricken people surging round the Church of Our Lady of Kasan.
You know the story.... Reports had been spread that all sufferers taken to the hospitals were poisoned there. Panic reigned. Revolution was imminent. And Tsar Nicholas drove into the square in his little one-horse droschky—leaped out and mounted the church steps with those long, quick strides of his—turned, and threw open the gray great-coat, showing the glitter of the Orders he wore. Beneath the rim of the spiked helmet his sullen eyes blazed at his people.... His puffy cheeks had lost their crimson and were deadly pale.... He bellowed at the full pitch of that extraordinary voice of his: “Russians, to your knees!” and down they went.... No wonder they believed in their Tsar, those Ivans and Piotrs.
Later they arrived at the pitch of interchanging civilities with the British invader. Sentries who were posted within hailing-distance on the banks of the Tchernaya, would swop pipes or lumps of black bread for bits of biscuit—exchange confidences oddly couched in a jargon of their own. They agreed that the Frantsos were bono, the Ruskies were bono, the Anglichanin were bono; but that the Turk was no bono at all.
Referring to the Child of Islâm, the Piotrs or Ivans would expectorate, and hold their noses, as though those organs were afflicted with an unpleasant odor; while Thomas Atkins or William Brown would affect to run away in terror, squalling: “Ship, Johnny! Ship!”