CHAPTER XIII.

PLEVNA.

There is in one of the minor streets of Plevna a small baker's shop, with no other sign indicating that bread may be bought within than the painted semblance of a curiously twisted cake upon the yellow wall between the window and the low door.

On the seventh of September, eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, this painted cake was the nearest approach to bread that could be seen in the neighbourhood. For many weeks there had been no pleasant odour of browning loaves, no warm air from the oven at the back of the shop. Curious irony of fate! The baker had died of starvation. I almost hesitate to tell that the foul heap of clothing lying in the ditch a few yards down the hill was all the earthly remnant of the late owner of this useless establishment. Useless because there was nothing in Plevna now to bake. He had been dead many days, but there seemed to be no question of burying him. There were too many wounded, too many sick, dying, and festering men, for the living to have time to think of the dead. The heavy pestilential air was full of the groans of these poor wretches.

Within the little shop were three men--one seated at a rough table, a second standing before him, the third perched nonchalantly on the window-sill smoking a cigarette. The last-mentioned had the advantage of his companions in the matter of years, but of the three his gravity of demeanour was most noticeable. Amidst such squalid surroundings--by the side, as it were, of death--his personal appearance was somewhat remarkable, for he was neat and clean in dress. His fresh rosy cheek had that cleanly appearance which denotes the recent passage of the razor, the light moustache was brushed aside with a rakish upward flourish. The nose was small and straight, the eyes blue. A bright red fez tilted rather forward completed the smart appearance of the smoker, who manipulated his cigarette daintily, and, while listening to the conversation of his two companions, made no attempt to join in it. This man was Tefik Bey, Osman Pasha's chief of staff, one of the defenders of Plevna. I confess that Tefik is a puzzle to me. I cannot tell what sort of man he is. He is indescribable. Taciturn to a degree, he was barely thirty years of age, and looked younger. A dark, sombre, silent man is more or less a straight-forward production of Nature; but Tefik had the appearance of a light-hearted talker, and belied it.

The man standing in the middle of the small, low-roofed chamber was his wonderful chief, Osman Pasha. Tall, strongly built, and handsome, he formed a striking contrast to his young colleague. A loose, dark-blue cloak hung from his shoulders, and the inevitable fez surmounted his powerful brow. A short black beard concealed a chin of unusual firmness, and from time to time a nervous movement of a somewhat dusky hand brushed the hair aside with a rustling sound. The nose was large and inclined downwards with a heavy curve, while beneath bushy brows a pair of steadfast black eyes looked sorrowfully forth upon the world. There was determination and a great energy in those eyes, despite their wan thoughtfulness.

He who sat at the table we know. It was Theodore Trist. Clean and carefully shaven, he was literally clad in rags; but his face had lost its old dreaminess, its vague meekness of demeanour. A clear light in his eyes, the set of his lips, conveyed in some indefinite way that this man was in his element. Despite his hollow cheeks and sunken temples, in the midst of that heavy reek of death and blood, this Englishman was visibly happy.

'Do you want,' Osman was saying, 'to see what we can do with our triple ranks of Berdans?'

'Yes.'

'To-morrow Skobeleff will attack the redoubt again. He has positive orders to take it at any cost.'

'_Will_ he take it?' asked Trist.

Osman turned with a smile towards Tefik, who was lighting a second cigarette. The chief of staff shrugged his shoulders, and threw away the end of the last cigarette with a sideward movement of his lips.

Osman shrugged his shoulders in precisely the same way.

'Who knows?' he said quietly. 'If they value the redoubt at four thousand lives, they might do it.'

Trist set his two elbows on the table and looked up at the speaker's face with calm speculative scrutiny. He did not offer him a chair, because he knew that Osman rarely sat down. The great soldier had no time for rest.

'Skobeleff,' said the Englishman, 'is a great man, but Napoleon would have been in here some time ago.'

Tefik moved slightly, and looked towards his two companions with a vague smile. He knew nothing of Napoleon the Great and his method of making war. Moreover, he did not care to know.

It was the chief of staff who finally broke a silence of some duration.

'Listen, Osman,' he said in a soft, dreamy voice. 'I hear the sound of a new gun. The Russians have mounted another big one. We are going to get it very hot.'

All three raised their heads and listened. After the lapse of a minute a dull thud broke upon their ears. The Russians had mounted a new siege gun, and Plevna was beginning its career as a target for a steadily increasing army of artillery. There was no indecent haste in loading or sponging. It was excellent practice for the gunners, and through the next three months the sound of heavy firing never quite ceased night or day. At times, by way of variety, the whole of the artillery combined in directing its fire upon a spot previously selected. But the grim game was not all on one side, for Plevna pluckily returned blow for blow.

'There is,' said an expert at Russian headquarters, 'a European directing those guns--probably a German.'

But Trist never sighted a single shot, although he did not withhold his advice.

'I know where it is,' said Tefik at last. 'Perhaps we can get at it.'

And he left the room quietly.

The two men remaining there did not speak for some time. Trist was occupied with a large sheet of paper covered with a fine writing, and showing columns of figures. Osman had brought this to him, and was now evidently waiting for it. The Englishman skimmed up the columns with the celerity of a banker's clerk, muttering the additions in his native language. The hand that held the pen was brown and scarred with manual labour, for Trist had worked in the trenches day and night.

'Yes,' he said at length, looking up in a business-like, curt way, which showed that between these men there was some bond of comradeship. 'Those figures are all right. At an extremity you could even reduce the allowance of soup, could you not?'

The soldier shook his head with a wan and momentary smile.

'Scarcely,' he replied. 'It is getting colder every day. If we want to hold out we must keep up the hearts of the men, and if there is nothing to press them upwards all our hearts drop into our stomachs, my friend.'

'There is more clothing to be had. We get a fresh supply day by day,' said Trist, with an uneasy sigh.

Osman winced. The meaning was only too clear, for the time had long since gone by for men to scruple over stripping the dead for the benefit of the living.

'Yes. You are right.'

With these words the commander of Plevna turned to go.

'What news have you?' inquired Trist indifferently, as he set in order the papers lying upon his table. He spoke in a loud voice, as all men did in Plevna, because of the roar of artillery and the rolling echo among the hills.

'Oh--nothing of importance!'

'Are you quite without communications from outside?'

Osman turned upon the threshold, and looked back with a smile of assumed density. Then he disappeared through the low doorway.

Trist turned to his papers again, but he had not begun writing when the Turkish commander appeared once more.

'Trist,' he said, coming forward with long, heavy strides.

'Yes.'

'I can get you out to-night. Had you not better go?'

'I would rather stay,' replied the Englishman. 'I am neither a woman nor a child.'

'But why run the risk?'

'It is my duty.'

'What we are enduring now,' said Osman, in a dull, painful voice, 'is nothing to what I foresee. At present we make some small attempt to collect bodies and ... and limbs, and bury them. Soon that will be impossible, for we shall want all our men at the guns and in the redoubts. The winter is coming on--food is already scarce--the wounded cannot be cared for. They and the dead will lie about the streets rotting in their own blood. My friend! this place will be a hell on earth!'

'Nevertheless, I stay.'

'Disease will take the town before the Russians break through--few of us will live to see Christmas!' pleaded Osman.

The Englishman looked up, pen in hand. There was actually a smile hovering upon his firm lips.

'It is useless,' he said very gently. 'I stay till the end.'

'As you like,' murmured the soldier, leaving the room.

Trist did not begin work again for some time. The pile of papers around was of sufficient dimensions to alarm a less methodical labourer, but in the apparent disorder there was really a perfect system. Darkness closed in soon, and the war-correspondent lighted a small lamp. Then he laid aside the larger mass of paper, and selected a sheet which he doubled carefully into the form of a letter.

'It is better,' he said, 'to face all probabilities. I shall write to her now, in case we are starved to death in here like rats.'

Far into the night this strange, restless Englishman sat at the little table writing. Heedless of the roar of artillery, the merry call of the bugle, and the groan of the dying, he wrote on at a great speed, for above all he was a writer. His pen sped over the paper with that precision which only comes from long practice--line after line, page after page of the small paper, perfect in punctuation, ready for the press in true journalistic form.

He folded the letter, and enclosed it in an envelope, which he addressed carefully in a legible roundhand.

'There,' he murmured, 'let that be the last line I write to-night. It seems to me that we are on the verge of a crisis. Osman has something on his mind ... I wonder if he means to cut his way out.'

Before lying down to rest on the heap of straw which served him as a bed, he collected all his papers and placed them securely in a large leather despatch-case, upon which was painted in black letters the address of the newspaper which he served. This was his nightly custom; for he was out all day upon the walls among the devoted children of Islam, and where bullets are flying no man has a right to ignore the chances of death. There was no bravado in the action, but a mere simple method. The chances were much in favour of the little baker's shop being left empty one night; but that was no reason why the British public should be defrauded of its rightful sensation in the matter of words written by a hand that is still, for nothing is so safe to draw as the last words of one who has died in battle or mishap.

People who live peaceably at home are accustomed to receive great odds in the game of life and death. They, therefore, cannot understand why others--wanderers, sailors at all times, soldiers in time of war--are content with the lighter favour, and have the power of living happily in close proximity to death.