Chapter XLIV: Jim's Luck

Jim, by force of circumstance, acquired a very wholesome reputation as the best-mounted man in the Light Brigade, as a tireless rider, and as an officer who doggedly carried out his instructions. The result was much hard work, which he enjoyed, and much commendation, which he thoroughly deserved.

When the Russians retired from the Danube and disappeared into the wilds of Wallachia, Lord Cardigan was ordered to follow them with a party of gallopers and learn what route they had taken.

The first man picked for his troop was Jim Carron, and Jim was wild with delight. Here, at last, was something out of the common to be done, something with more than a spice of danger in it, and altogether to his liking.

They were away for seventeen days, camping as best they could without tents, and they rode through three hundred miles of the wildest and most desolate country Jim had ever set eyes on. For one hundred miles at a stretch they never saw a human being, but finally got on the track of the Russians and found they had gone by way of Babadagh. Then they rode up the Danube to Silistria and returned to camp by way of Shumla, somewhat way-worn as to the horses, but the men fit and hard as nails.

But they were the fortunate ones, and their satisfaction with their lot could not leaven the seething mass of growling discontent represented by the remaining fifty thousand would-be warriors, who had come out all aflame with martial ardour, but had so far never set eyes on an enemy, who were ready to die cheerfully for a cause which not one in a hundred properly understood, but found themselves like to moulder with ennui and lack of proper provisioning.

Their hopes had been constantly raised only to be dashed. They were to go up to the Danube to help the Turks against the Russians. They were aching to go. But fifty thousand men need feeding, and the commissariat was in a state of confusion, and transport non-existent and unprocurable. So they stayed where they were, and mouldered and cursed, and began to look askance at the whole business and to doubt the good faith of every one concerned.

Many officers fell sick, some threw up their commissions in disgust and went home. The men would have liked to follow.

In July came the inevitable consequences of ill-feeding, ill-temper, enforced idleness, and mismanagement--the men became as sick in body as they had long been at heart. The heats and rains of August turned the camps into steaming stew-pans, and the men, who would have faced death by shot and steel with cheers, died miserably of cholera and typhus, and dying, struck a chill to the hearts of those who were left.

The officers did their best--got up games for them and races. But the more intimate companionship between officers and men which obtained in the French army was lacking in the British, and could not be called into spasmodic existence on the spur of the moment.

The races alone excited a certain amount of enthusiasm, and whenever Jim happened to be in camp he carried all before him.

With quite mistaken grandmotherly solicitude, too, the bands were all silenced, lest their lively music should jar on the ears of the SICK and dying. The men tried sing-songs of their own, but sorely missed their music, and those near any of the French camps would walk any distance to share with them the cheery strains they could not get at home.

The camps were moved from place to place in vain attempt at dodging death. But death went with them and the men died in hundreds. And those who were sent to the hospitals at Varna wished they had died before they got there.

Through all that dreadful time, when the doctors were next to powerless and burying-parties the order of the day, our two boys kept wonderfully well. And for that they were not a little indebted to Lord Deseret, to a certain amount of fatherly oversight on the part of Colonel Carron, and perhaps most of all to the fact that they were kept busy.

Jack and his fellows beat the country-sides for game until they had swept them bare.

Jim, still in luck, was sent out to buy horses, and travelled far and wide, and still farther and wider as the nearer provinces became depleted. And when Jack's game was finished he got permission to go with him, and in those long, venturesome rides they two renewed their youth together, and rejoiced in one another, and found life good.

Many a lively adventure they had as they scoured the long Bulgarian plains in search of their four-legged prizes, for which they paid a trifle over a pound a leg in cash, whereby they beat their French opponents, who only paid in paper which had to be cashed at French Head-quarters, one hundred or more miles away.

To the boys it was all a delightful game; and getting the horses home, when they had found and bought them, was by no means the least exciting part of it. But the chief thing was that it took them out of the deadly camps, kept them fully occupied, and in soundest health when so many sickened and died.

The risks of the road were comparatively small, and they always went well armed and with an escort.

Danger, indeed, lurked nearer home. For the twenty miles of road between Varna and the camps at Aladyn and Devna began to be infested with the baser spirits from among the great gathering of the off-scourings of the Levant which had flocked after the army.

Outrages were of daily occurrence, and every man who went that way alone rode warily, with his hand on his revolver and his eyes on the look out.

One day Jack had ridden up to the plateau by the sea, where the Dragoons were, to visit George Herapath and Harben, who were both down with dysentery, and Jim had been delayed at the commissary's office by the only part of the business in which he took no delight--the settlement of his accounts, which never by any chance came out right.

They were cantering home in the cool of the evening, when cries of distress at a short distance from the road turned their horses' heads that way, and galloping up in haste they came on a band of Bashi-Bazouks--cut-throat ruffians whom General Yusuf was trying to lick into shape--dragging away a young country girl, whose terrified eyes had caught sight of the British uniforms. Already that uniform carried with it greater guarantee of right and justice than any of the many others with which the country was overrun. So as soon as she saw them she shrieked for help, and they answered.

"Let her go, you beasts!" shouted Jack, as he dragged out his sword.

And then, as dirty hands fumbled in waist-shawls full of pistols, Jim's revolver cracked out, and two of the rascals went down. Curses and bullets flew promiscuously for a second or two, and then the remaining Bashis bolted, leaving four on the ground and the girl on their hands.

"What the deuce are we to do with her?" said Jack, as the spoils of war clung tearfully to his leg.

"Where?" asked Jim, in one of the few native words he had picked up in the course of business.

"Pravadi," panted the girl.

"That's over yonder, past Aladyn," said Jim. "We'd better take her home, or those brutes will get her again. I'll take her up--my horse is fresher than yours. Come along, my beauty!" And he stuck out his boot for a foot-rest, and held out his hand to the girl.

The uniform was her sufficient guarantee, and she climbed up and straddled the horse, and locked her arms tightly round Jim's waist.

"All right?" he asked. And they turned to the road.

Two minutes later they fell in with a Turkish patrol galloping up at sound of the firing, and had some difficulty in making them understand that they were not carrying off the girl on their own account. They were only convinced by being led back to the place where the wounded Bashis lay. Then they offered to take care of the girl and see her safely home. But she knew them too well and would have none of them. She clung like a leech to Jim, and at last they were permitted to go on their way.

They had many little adventures of the kind, and they tended to keep their blood in circulation, and the blues, which afflicted their fellows, at a distance.

Lord Deseret had laid down the law for Jim as regards eating and drinking.

"I have lived in Turkey," he said. "Drink no water unless it has been boiled, and then dash it with rum. Tea or coffee are better still. And eat as little fruit as possible; it's tempting, but dangerous."

And Jim used to get wildly angry with his men, when he saw them devouring cucumbers by the half-dozen, and apricots and plums by the basketful, under the impression that these things were good for their health. They laughed at his remonstrances at first, but remembered them later; and those who did not die foreswore cucumbers for the rest of their lives.