After this event, for some days I avoided the Yuze Bashi Hussein, for whom I had conceived a horror in consequence of the tragic story of Constantine Vidimo, whose fate made a deep impression on the whole of our little mess, but on none more than myself—for I had, as related, addressed him twice, and it was to me that his relaxing hand had slowly yielded up the coral cross, which I resolved to preserve as a souvenir of our service in the East. We ceased to invite the Yuze Bashi to mess, where his bulbous figure, preposterous and goat-like beard, diminutive scarlet fez, frogged surtout, long crooked sabre, and comically ferocious visage, were an endless source of amusement, wit, and caricature; but judge of my annoyance when I found that, in consequence of this modern Bashaw having conceived a vehement fancy or friendship for me, I was to be separated from the jovial society of my brother-officers, and to be detached—on his especial application—with one sergeant, one piper, and thirty rank and file, to the castle of Rodosdchig, his military government or commandery, which lay about thirty miles distant.
'For what purpose is this detachment detailed?' I asked rather angrily at mess, on the day I read the announcement in orders, as being the will and pleasure of our Brevet-Major commanding.
'To strengthen the stout captain's little garrison of Topchis.'
'But why?'
'They are in danger of an attack from certain armed and insurrectionary Greeks, whom the secret agency of some Russian priests are omitting no means of inflaming and exciting to discontent against the authority of the Sultan and his Pashas.'
'Why are Turks not sent—the Mir Alai has eight hundred of them here in garrison?'
'He does us the honour to believe that red-coats will more completely awe the malcontent Greeks.'
'In this service I may get a slash from a yataghan, or a ball from a brass-barrelled pistol sans credit and honour.'
'Not at all,' said Belton; 'either will be quite as honourable as a shot from the Rifle Pits, or a splinter from a Whistling Dick out of the Redan.'
'Which, by-the-by, none of us are likely to see,' grumbled Catanagh, draining a long glass of Kirklissa wine, with an angry sigh.
By this time our Major had communicated with the British military authorities at Constantinople, detailing the loss of the Vestal, and that he had obtained quarters for his men in the Bombardiers' Barracks at Heraclea, or Erekli, as the Turks name it; and, by a messenger, he was instructed to remain in his present cantonment until further orders, as there was every prospect now of hostilities ceasing, and our presence would not be required with Sir Colin Campbell and the Highland Brigade.
At this time, January 3rd, 1856, we had fifty-eight thousand British soldiers in the Crimea; a Council of War, composed of British and French general officers, had assembled in Paris, and Russia had accepted the Austrian propositions as a basis for the negotiation of a peace. The despatch to the Major concluded by stating, that the French had blown up Fort St. Nicolas at Sebastopol, where our miners were busy destroying the magnificent docks. With this long document going the round of the mess-table, we gulped down our disappointment and the Roumelian wine together, on the evening before I marched with this devil of a Yuze Bashi to his castle of Rodosdchig; and our enthusiastic hopes of a protracted war—a war that from the mouth of the Danube would roll like a flame over Hungary, Poland, and Italy—our hopes of rapid promotion, of French medals and crosses of the Legion of Honour, dwindled down into tame and vapid surmises as to the disbanding of second battalions, and the parsimonious reduction of additional captains, lieutenants, and ensigns.
'So we shall be here till further orders,' observed the Major, in conclusion.
'Abominable ill luck!' said Jack Belton.
'Instead of being at Sebastopol, in at the death. and the glory of the affair,' chimed the captain of our Light Bobs, 'we shall be learning to smoke opium and sit crosslegged, to relish pillau, eat hash, and pepperpot with our fingers.'
'And to rub up our Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so forth, to make love to the charming Haidees of Roumelia—but, waiter, see who knocks at the door!' added the Major, as a rat-tat rang on the painted door of the long room which was fitted up for our temporary mess, and the walls of which were painted in arabesques with pious quotations from the Koran.
The Highlander in his kilt, who acted as one of our mess-waiters, opened the door and ushered in our acquaintance, the fat Yuze Bashi, who, having a lively recollection of the bright, amber-coloured sherry, and full-bodied old port, which we had saved from the bulged hull of Her Majesty's steam-transport Vestal, visited us as often as propriety would allow; for he was a cunning old dog, who willingly gave up his chance of the slender houris in Heaven for a cup of good wine and the plump and substantial houris of earth.
Carrying his pipe and, of course, his paunch before him, he entered with a prodigious salaam and bowed to us all; then he ogled the decanter, and sat down near Catanagh, who was too polite and too much of a soldier not to accord him a welcome.
We spoke of European politics, of which the obtuse brain of the Yuze Bashi, Hadjee Hussein Ebn al Ojuz, knew as much as he did about electricity, the longitude, the 'philosoplry of the infinite,' a good pun, or anything else, which is incomprehensible to an Oriental mind.
Belton spoke of the Greek girls, and then the old fellow became lively, and looked roguishly out at the corners of his sly black eyes.
'Inshallah!' said he; 'I do love pretty girls with all the zeal of a true Believer. Mohammed! yes—I have played some strange pranks in my time among the fair-haired Tcherkesses, and the black-eyed Cockonas of Bucharest—the City of Delights—as its name imports. Yes, and there are some pretty ones in Egypt too, who have good reason to remember the Hadjee Hussein. But my heart has long been fixed upon obtaining a Russian. They are large, those Muscovites, and plump and fair-skinned, round and white as eggs; and, please God, I shall perhaps have a couple of them yet.'
'Scarcely,' said Belton, 'for we are on the eve of a peace; so, Captain, your chances are small.'
His eyes flashed fire at the idea of a peace.
'Good can never come of it!' said he; 'we shall have all these battles to fight over again; all these fortresses to take and to defend; and the Muscovite swine may yet wallow upon the shores of the Golden Horn, if Britain and France are false to us, and we are false to ourselves! Yet Heaven, they say, was with us in this war.'
'They—who?'
'Mashallah! by "they," one means that mysterious personage on whom one fathers everything that lacks a better authority.'
'Bono!' said the major; 'well, captain—they say—'
'That at Silistria ten thousand angels, in green dresses, were visible to all the Faithful, fighting against the God-abandoned Russians. The Hafiz Moustapha counted their ten green banners with a thousand under each. Even the English newspapers repeated that.'
'I remember to have read it,' said I.
'Yes,' resumed Hussein, gathering confidence on my corroboration; 'ten thousand, like those who fought for Islamism, in the war of the Ditch, and at the battle of Bedr, against the Koreish; but instead of iron maces, which shot forth fire at every stroke, our Silistrian angels appeared as well-appointed infantry.'
'By the breeches of the Prophet!' muttered the Major, in an under tone; 'only think of ten thousand well-appointed angels, in heavy marching order—all with sixty rounds of ball-cartridge at their blessed backs!'
'But if it pleases our lord the Sultan, who is God's shadow upon earth, to make peace with these grovelling Russian curs—if he thinks that hell is sufficiently full of them—why should I, who am unworthy to kiss his slippers, dare to advise?'
'Of course—so fill your glass, Captain Hussein, and pass the bottles.'
'Abdul Medjid,' continued our fat guest, who began to wax guttural, slow, and prosy, as the fumes of the wine mounted into his oriental cranium—'Abdul Medjid, though he rejoiceth in the titles of Lord of the Black and White Seas; Master of Europe, Asia, and Africa; Lord of Bagdad, Damascus, Belgrade, and Agra; the Odour of Paradise—the Ke-ke-keeper of the Holy Cities of Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina—is—is—'
'Is devilishly in want of the "ready," I believe,' said Belton, rather abruptly, closing a sentence the end of which Hussein had lost.
After making various ineffectual efforts to resume where he hud left off so suddenly, and to regain the thread of his subject, which Jack's abrupt interruption had somewhat entangled, Hussein dropped his bearded chin upon his breast, and after a snort or two, let his chibouque fall, as he dropped into a deep sleep, overcome by the wine, of which he had partaken too freely, and the strength of which was too potent for him.
'Now,' said Catanagh, 'here is a good specimen of the modern Turk, who has retained all the vices, and none of the virtues, of his ancestors. Selfish, sensual, ignorant, and brutal, he is a Mohammedan only in those things which minister to his luxury. But the old world is changing fast, and here the new has not much to recommend it. Ancient things are passing away, and in the slaves who crouch beneath the Turkish yoke we look in vain for the sons of those who fought at Marathon, and who died at Thermopylæ. Green be the grass and bright the flowers that there grow, say I! Omnibuses have rattled through the gate of the Ilissus; a matter-of-fact Scotsman has ploughed up the plains of Marathon, and gas-lamps have shed their light upon the Acropolis. The 'Maid of Athens' (as Stephen tells us in his book) has become plain Mrs. George Black, the wife of King Otho's Scotch superintendent of police, and the buxom mother of various little Blacks—so much for romance and for the land of Homer in the age of steam! Turks are practising the polka and, deux-temps! coals have been found in Mount Calvary, and Albert Smith has stuck 'Punch's' posters on the Pyramid; the Highland bagpipe, that fifty years ago rang in the streets of Bagdad and Grand Cairo, has now sent up its yell at the Golden Horn, and the mosque of St. Sophia has echoed to the rattle of the British Grenadiers. We have come to the end of all things, and may light our pipes with Æschyrus and Herodotus.
'Xerxes the great did die,
And so must you and I.'
Try these cheroots, Mac Innon, and please pass the wine, Jack; we must drink to Allan—a pleasant march to Rodosdchig, and may we soon have him safe back again, to be under my illustrious command, if not quite under this auspicious mahogany!'