Chapter XLII: Due East

Jack, to his immense delight, found himself detailed for duty with a large number of his men to assist General Canrobert in the fortification of the long narrow peninsula on which, Gallipoli is situated.

No matter that the fortifications were little likely to be of any actual benefit, it was active service and turning to practical account the theoretical knowledge of which he was full.

The men, who had left England ablaze with warlike fervour amid the cheers of the populace, had found their long detention at Malta very trying and relaxing. Warlike fervour cannot keep at boiling-point unless it has something to expend itself upon. And so they welcomed this diversion, and planned, and built earthen ramparts, and bastions, and barbettes, and ravelins, and redoubts, to their hearts' content, and felt very much better both in mind and body than when they were kicking their heels and frizzling in the tawny dust of Malta.

There were many discomforts, however, chiefly in regard to the provisioning. Even at this very first stage in the proceedings the men had little to eat and less to drink; and if curses could have assisted the commissariat, or blighted it off the face of the earth, its movements would have been mightily quickened. But forty years of peace do not make for efficiency in the fighting machine. It had grown rusty through disuse, as all machines will, and the ominous creakings which began at Gallipoli never ceased till--too late for the hosts of gallant souls who died of want before Sebastopol--England awoke at last to the shame of her relapse, and set her house in order with a roar of righteous, but belated, indignation.

Jack and his men fared better than most, through their intimacy with the Frenchmen, who had the knack of living in plenty where others starved. Jack brushed up his French, and found welcome, and still more welcome hospitality, among the officers, and his men learned how tasty dinners could be made out of the scantiest of rations if only you knew how to do it.

But the slow weeks dragged on; there was no sign of an enemy, and the fighting for which they had come out seemed as far off as ever. And the little advance army growled and grizzled and cursed things in general, and began to get a trifle mouldy. And meanwhile the Turks, under Omar, were valiantly holding the Danube against the Russians, and the allied generals were in communication with the allied ambassadors at Constantinople, and the ambassadors were in communication with the un-allied diplomatists at Vienna, and the diplomatists were seeking instructions from London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, and futile talk blocked the way of warlike deeds.

It was the middle of May before the welcome order came to move on, and their spirits rose at the prospect. They had come out to fight, and anything was better than moulting at Gallipoli.

But the diplomats were still chopping words at Vienna, so they were all dumped down again at Scutari, till the wise men should see which way the cat was really going to jump.

More weary weeks followed, though, since they gave Jack the chance of seeing a great deal of Constantinople, he at all events had no cause for complaint. The neat little steamer, which the Sultan had placed at the disposal of the British officers, ran across in a quarter of an hour and plied to and fro constantly; and having no duties to perform, Jack missed none of his opportunities and saw all he could, and that included many strange sights.

He made many new acquaintances, and began to lose somewhat of the studious concentration which had hitherto stood in the way of his making any very close friendships even at Woolwich and Chatham. He had given heart and brain to his work, and now only craved the opportunity of applying his knowledge and climbing the ladder. While frivolous Jim, with a modicum of the brains and still less of the application, somehow possessed the knack of making friends wherever he went. And having mastered his drill and won the hearts of his men, he also considered his military education completed, and longed only to get the chance of showing what was in him and them.

Jim would have had a delightful time in Constantinople, and, with all his desire for glory, would still have enjoyed himself thoroughly; but Jack, with most of his fellows, felt keenly that all this was not what they had come out for; and when, in June, orders came to embark for Varna, up along the coast of the Black Sea towards the Danube, he was heartily glad. For there had been heavy fighting on the Danube, and if they could only get there in time there might still be a chance of showing what they were made of.

It was four months since they left England, and so far they had practically done nothing more than mark time, and there is a certain monotony about that necessary but fruitless operation which has a depressing effect on spirits and bodies alike.

However, they were getting on by degrees at last, though what their ultimate objective really was no one seemed to know, unless, perhaps, Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud, and they kept their own counsel.

Jack had been a fortnight at Varna, and was beginning to get sick of it as he had of Malta and Gallipoli, when one day the stately _Himalaya_ steamed quietly in among the mob of smaller craft which crowded Varna Bay, and began to discharge the first of the cavalry that had put in an appearance. This looked like business, and Jack joined the crowd watching the disembarkation.

"Hello, Jim, old boy!"

"Hello, Jack! That you?" And the boys of Carne had met again.

"Hardly knew you in those togs. Took you for a tramp," grinned Jim.

"You loaf here for half a dozen weeks, my boy, and you'll come to it. Have you any news? Are we going on? We're all sick to death of the whole business."

"_I_ dunno. We've come straight through. We began to be afraid we'd be too late and miss all the fun."

"You've not missed much so far. We've been frizzling and grizzling all this time. Never seen the ghost of a Russian so far."

"Waiting for us, I expect. Can't get on without cavalry."

"If that's what we've been waiting for we're all mighty glad to see you. All this hanging about is the hardest work I've ever done yet."

"Where are you living?"

"Up on the hill there. You'll be going on to Devna, I expect. That's twenty miles further up."

"I've got to look after the horses. They've done splendidly so far. Not lost a leg. We'll have a talk when we knock off." And Jim turned to the congenial work of seeing his equine friends safely ashore.

When he had seen them all picketed on the stretch of turf near the beach, and enjoyed for a time their rollings and stretchings and kickings of cramped heels, he walked away up the shore, had his first delicious swim in the Black Sea, and then made his way into the dirty little town and struggled slowly through its narrow streets, packed with such a heterogeneous assortment of nationalities as his wondering eyes had never looked upon before.

Guardsmen, Fusiliers, Riflemen, Highlanders, Dragoons, and Hussars, Lancers, Chasseurs, Zouaves, Artillerymen, and Cantinières; Greeks, Turks, Italians, Smyrniotes, Bashi-Bazouks, and nondescripts of all shapes and sizes; dark, windowless little shops with streaming calico signs in many languages, offering for sale every possible requirement from pickles to saddlery, but especially drinks; a slow-moving, chattering, chaffering, and occasionally quarrelling, mob of shakos, turbans, fezes, Highland bonnets, _képis_, and wide-awakes, with bearded faces under them in every possible shade of brown and mud-colour,--no wonder it took Jim a long time to get through.

But he got out into the open country at last, and breathed clean air again, and climbed the hill and found his way to Jack's tent, and demanded something to drink.

"What a place!" he gasped. "Never saw such a sight in my life!"

"Beastly hole!" growled Jack. "I wish to Heaven they'd get us on and give us some work to do."

"Why don't they?"

"Ah--why don't they? Some one may know, but I'm beginning to doubt it. When we came up here we had hopes again, but now they say the Russians have had enough on the Danube and are bolting, so that's off. What's the news from home? I've hardly had a letter since we left."

Jim gave him of his latest, and handed him Lord Deseret's present, which Jack found greatly to his taste.

"No more news of Kattie?" he asked presently, when other subjects seemed exhausted, and in a tone that anticipated a negative reply.

"Yes. I found her--the very last night," said Jim quietly.

"You did? How was it?"

"I had been dining with Lord Deseret, and saying good-bye all round, and was dead tired. We were to start at six next morning and I was hurrying home to get some sleep, when suddenly Kattie stepped up and spoke to me."

"Good God! Did she know it was you?"

"Oh yes. She hadn't got so low as all that. But it gave me a shock, I can tell you, Jack, to meet her like that, though we had been doing all we could to find her."

"And how did she seem? And what had she to say for herself?"

"She looked prettier than I'd ever seen her--better dressed, you know, and all that."

"And what did she say?"

"She flatly refused to tell me who had brought her to London. She had heard we were leaving in the morning and she wanted to say good-bye--so she said."

"Deuced odd! What did you do?"

"Well--I was knocked all of a heap and didn't know what to do. Then I suddenly bethought me of Mine Beteta. She had been very kind to me, and only that afternoon, when I was saying good-bye, she had laughed and said her only regret was that I hadn't got into any scrape that she could help me out of. It was jolly nice of her, you know. So I bundled Kattie into a cab, and took her straight to madame, and left her with her."

"Poor little Kattie! She was too good for that kind of thing. And you got no hint as to who----

"Not a word. I asked her straight, and she said she would not tell."

"I'd like to wring his neck for him, whoever he was."

"She probably knew we would feel that way, and that's why she wouldn't speak. And how have you been keeping, Jack? Seems to me you look thinner. Perhaps it's the way you dress--or don't dress. I never saw such a seedy, weedy-looking set. You'd certainly be taken for tramps in England."

"Just you wait, my boy. If you get four months of this infernal loafing in dust and dirt and blazing sun, you'll come to it. And I may well be thin. I'd hang every commissary in the service. They starve us half the time and give us rubbish the rest."

"That sounds bad. What's got them?"

"Everything's at sixes and sevens. All the food and drink in one place and all the hungry and thirsty souls in another, some hundreds of miles away. If I was the Chief I'd hang a commissary every time the men go short. And the amount of red-tape! Oh, Lord! But you'll know all about it before you're through, my boy. Some of the fellows have chucked it and gone home."

"Rotters!"

"I don't know. It's been almost beyond endurance at times, and all so senseless, and nothing comes of it. Starving for a good cause is one thing, but starving simply because the men who ought to feed you are fools is quite another."

"Overworked, I expect."

"Underbrained, I should say. I'll ask you three months hence what you think about it all."

Jim was very busy the next few days getting his men and horses on to Devna. His chiefs had found out that he could get more out of men and horses than most, and that when he took a thing in hand he did it. So work was heaped upon him and he was as happy as could be.

He messed with Charlie Denham in a little tent on the shore, bathed morning and night, and Joyce and Denham's man saw that their masters--and incidentally themselves--were properly fed.