"A NEPEK BEAUTY."
It was at this moment, fired by the wildest enthusiasm, that a perfectly bewitching gipsy girl rushed forward and led her tribe against the common enemy. Bayonets, however, if sometimes brittle, are often stubborn things, and the steadily advancing lines of Hungarian troops quieted at last those desperate Nepeks; not, however, before many were severely wounded and numbers of prisoners taken, amongst whom I found myself being hurried off to a guard tent, much to my annoyance, since night was approaching, and I wanted to get back to Belgrade before sundown. That annoyance, however, was short-lived, since I found myself placed in the same tent as that lovely young gipsy girl, to whom I had lost my all-too-susceptible heart an hour ago; indeed, then it was that I made the rough sketch which illustrates this article. Her chiselled features, the wildfire in her sloe-black eyes, her dishevelled hair, and the coins and beads with which those locks were interwoven, her torn green velvet bodice and coarse salmon-coloured skirt are all as vividly before me now as then. Nor did she seem averse to my companionship, especially when she found I could make myself understood through the medium of two languages—that of Romany, which is, of course, common to gipsies of all nationalities, and that of the eye, which is common to humanity at large. Indeed, when, later on, we were liberated, my freedom came all too soon. I had been made captive by one who now had to return to her kinsfolk, while I, in melancholy mood, was pulled across "the Danube's blue waters" in the direction of Belgrade, casting, as I did so, many furtive glances behind at my fair fellow-prisoner, who, with several others, was waving me adieux from the shore; and I think, if I remember rightly, in my dreams that night, coils of dishevelled raven hair and sloe-black eyes played a conspicuous part.
Should you ever be called upon to assist at an operation on the leg of a fellow-creature under circumstances in which chloroform is not obtainable, insist on holding the wounded or otherwise affected limb. I speak advisedly, since I recall, while writing, a little incident which happened to me in the hospital at Belgrade on the occasion of my bringing to that place several men who had been wounded at Delegrad and Alixenatz. One of these had to go through the painful process of probing for a bullet, which had taken up its quarters somewhere in the calf of his left leg.
"Hold his right leg, Montagu," said Dr. McKeller, the head of the medical staff (than whom there was never a more brilliant Britisher on the war-path); "hold on to the right, and we'll look after the left." There was a merry twinkle in his eye which, at the time, I only attributed to his natural good humour.
Directly the probe made itself felt, that right leg was drawn up till the knee almost touched the nose of the patient, when, the pain becoming unbearable, that leg, to which I was still clinging, shot out straight, and, striking me in the chest, sent me, like a pellet from a catapult, flying across the ward, greatly to the merriment of the assembled doctors and nurses. Never, I say, under any circumstances, unless you are a Hercules, undertake, unaided, to hold—the other leg.
In these rambling reminiscences I wish rather to give to the reader a rough résumé of some few of my experiences than make any attempt at an abbreviated story of my life. Thus it is I pass in rapid review such incidents as in accidental succession present themselves. Indeed, as I write, I am reminded, by the snarls and contention for a bone of several dogs in the street below, of the Fosse Commune at Erzeroum, a deep entrenchment across which those who would from any point enter that grimy Oriental city have to pass on rough wooden bridges.
"WAR, PESTILENCE, AND FAMINE."
There must be some Eastern sentiment which necessitates the Turks of Anatolia being more or less in touch with the dead—otherwise why those mangy man-eaters (no, not tigers, but half savage dogs) which prowl about o' nights in the byways of Erzeroum, or scratch up in the graveyards, as they too often do, all that remains of poor humanity, which, in this part of the world, is but thinly and lightly covered with mother earth? The backs of these scavengers, raw, and sometimes bleeding, tell too plainly the nature of their calling, since they suffer from a peculiar scurvy so induced. When the commissariat is low, they go further afield, even to that cordon of corruption outside the place, where vultures, hawks, owls, and other birds of prey fight or forgather with wolves and such like four-footed adventurers, and where, though metaphorically the man-eater takes a back seat, he still picks up some loathsome trifles—the menu is not perhaps so choice as in his own graveyards, but the supply is plentiful enough in all conscience—everything corruptible, from a dead cat to a dead camel, finding a last resting-place somewhere within that seething circle.
Hark! Do you hear the thunder of the guns in the Devé Boyun Pass yonder? Do you see the smoke mingling with the fleeting clouds in the far distance? How complete a picture this—could you see it as I do now in my mind's eye—of "war, pestilence, and famine!"