The Cameronians: A Novel, Volume 2 (of 3)Grant, James
General
The Cameronians: A Novel, Volume 2 (of 3)
Grant, James
Fiction
Sunset, red and glowing, in a lovely land where a long spur of the
Balkan mountains overlooks the current of the Morava, and where fair
fields of rice and maize, hemp and tobacco, cover the upland slopes,
for it is early in September, and the days are of great heat still.
The golden shafts or rays of the setting sun shot upward from the
flank of the mountain range, and shed their ruddy gleam upon the
shining river. Slowly sank the glorious sun, as if reluctant to quit
the strange and terrible scenes it was leaving: on one side the camp
and bivouac of an army, with its fires for cooking and scaring wild
animals, its piles of baggage and arms, groups of soldiers in
thousands; on the other, the awful _débris_ of a newly-fought field,
covered with killed and wounded men and horses, broken caissons and
gun-carriages, drums and standards, pools of blood in which the flies
were battening; and paler then grew the upturned faces of the dead,
as the last segment of the sun disappeared, and the brightness it
left behind began to deepen from gold and red to sombre violet in the
plain, though light yet lingered on the mountain summits.
In the tents and around the fires, men spoke little of the artillery
duel that had preluded the conflict, of whether the Servians had
broken the armistice, or the Turks had done so by opening with their
guns, and little even of the victory; for the soldiers fresh from it
and flushed with triumph and carnage, Servians and Russians alike,
spoke only of the gallant but nameless British volunteer who had
saved the life of the general, the terrible old Tchernaieff, and that
of his chief aide-de-camp, the gallant Count Michail Palenka, and who
had been made a sub-lieutenant on the field, and decorated after it
with the gold cross of the order called the Takovo of Servia, and
welcomed back with shouts of,
'Dobro--dobro! Ghivo--ghivo! (Well done--long life); hourah!'
In one of the terrible charges of cavalry, led by himself,
Tchernaieff had his horse killed under him by a cannon shot, but this
volunteer had remounted him on his own, and also dragged Count
Palenka out of the terrible _mêlée_.
The Turkish horse were led, not by a Pasha or other officer, but by a
frantic dervish, wielding on high a long staff, furnished at the end
with a shining brass knob, and shouting:
'Allah is here! Allah and the angels who fought at Bedr!'
The Servian Hussars and Lancers, with the Russian Dragoons, advanced
to join issue in the charge for a third time, not sorry to exchange
close quarters for a desultory carbine-fire. Both sides came
thundering on, the Lancers with their spears in the rest, the
Dragoons with swords pointed to the front, and all with their horses
well in hand, till within a few yards, when they let them go at
racing speed, and dashed with terrible force and fury among the
Turkish squadron.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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