With the words, Jowell began to sink; and—firmly convinced that he was being taken in the wrong direction—presently found himself standing in a slushy alley-way.
Upon his right was a ten-foot parapet of yellow clay, strengthened with sandbags and earth-filled gabions. Upon his left was a low cliff, in which caves that were magazines for ammunition, and magnified rabbit-holes that made bomb-proof shelters for human beings, had been delved and burrowed out. There were embrasures in the right-hand parapet, and a row of thirty-two pounders was mounted on the platforms facing the embrasures; and haggard, hairy-faced sentries in tattered great-coats, wearing leg-bandages of sacking and canvas, were placed at intervals on mounds of clay, so that their eyes were raised above the level of the parapet.
The men who worked the guns were Royal Artillery, but the sentries, and two of a group of haggard men who sat with their backs against the parapet were Guards, wearing the forage-cap badge of the Garter Star, peculiarly distinctive of the Cut Red Feathers. Save for those shabby tarnished badges, and the stained and ragged silk sashes the two men wore over clumsy coats of rabbit-skin, there was nothing to distinguish them as officers, except an authoritative manner. Not even the fact that he knew himself to be in his nightshirt would have kept Jowell from breaking in upon their conversation. But even as he opened his mouth, there was a cry of “Shot!” followed by a crash; and earth and stones flew in showers, mingled with clouds of yellow dust.
A solid projectile from one of the Barbarians’ big brass sixty-two pounders had struck the parapet, knocking a good-sized piece away. One of the look-out men had toppled off his earth-mound, and lay sprawling in the shin-deep icy slush that was all stained with red about him. Men with gabions and shovels hastened to make good the damage to the epaulement. One of the seated officers got up, strode over, stooped down and examined the fallen private. Even to Thompson Jowell’s unskilled eyes there was no repairing him.
But something in the gait of the tall, broad-shouldered, weather-beaten young officer quickened the beating of the Contractor’s heart, and brought the tears into his eyes. It was his son, bronzed and whiskered, hard-bitten and lean, who said, “Gaw! Poor beggar!” as he rose up and turned away from the headless private. Regardless of his naked legs, and the freezing blasts that sported with his single garment, Thompson Jowell ran forwards, with hands outstretched, crying, in a gush of tenderness:
“Morty! My own boy!”
The face of the young officer had not previously been turned towards the visitor in the nightshirt. But now it met his fully, and the heart of Jowell stopped beating with a jolt. For that cold, ignoring look disowned him and unfathered him. It told him that he had been warned, and had ignored the warning; and that henceforth, of his own act, he must be a stranger to his only son.
In the horror of this revelation he screamed out, and awakened. He leaped out of bed and floundered to the window, pulled aside the blind, and looked upon a calm, bright dawn. Not a breath of wind creaked his elms, but far away in the Bay of Balaklava, Fate was brewing that Black Sea gale The Realm had waited for so long.
XCVI
She had got into harbor on the previous evening. Some of the troops on board—a draft of the 146th—had already been landed. The others came ashore after the ship broke up.