CHAPTER XIV.

THE PUZZLE OF LIFE.

For five days and five nights there was little sleep to be had in Plevna. The Russians did not attack, as had been generally expected within the town, but commenced a terrible bombardment. Day and night the heavy guns were served by continual relays of men, and life in the redoubts was such as to reconcile the most philosophic to death. Within the town the scene was simply hellish. Osman has been accused of neglecting his wounded, but no man who crouched in the little town he so gloriously defended during those days would have the courage to aver that he could have done more than he did.

Tuesday, the eleventh of September, dawned, gray and hopeless. The smoke of a million rifles, a thousand cannon, hung heavily over the low hills. The continuous roar of the last few days seemed to have benumbed the very air, even as it had paralyzed men's senses.

In the Russian camp upon the Loftcha road there were signs of extra activity. The artillery fire was somewhat slacker.

'They will attack the redoubts to-day,' Theodore Trist said to himself, as he surveyed the position of affairs in the gray morning light. There was not much to be seen, owing to the density of the fog hanging low in the vales, but the five days' bombardment followed by audible activity in camp had some meaning.

Osman knew his weak point as well as it was known by Skobeleff; but the Russian general--foolhardy, reckless, wild as he was--hesitated to attack.

But there is no man who can boast that he is free from the trammels of duty. 'Duty is a certainty,' says one of our great living preachers, and I think we often lose sight of that fact. Skobeleff had received orders to take the redoubt in the curve of the Loftcha road, and on the eleventh of September he made ready to obey. Whether it was a criminal blunder or a deliberate sacrifice of human life, it is not for us to say; nor must we blame the young general who, much against his will, sent his men forward to a certain death.

It was afternoon before the advance was made, and in many places the fog had lifted.

Theodore Trist, with that instinct of warfare which was his curse, had selected a spot on the hill behind the doomed fortification, and thence, or from near at hand, he witnessed that terrible day's work.

Failure was Skobeleff's _bête noir_. Success in this case was an absolute necessity. There was only one way of gaining it in face of the horrible fire which was waiting within the fortification. Like the waves of ocean the Russian general swept his men up at carefully selected intervals. No troops in the world could have advanced under such galling volleys--they were bound to waver and fall back. But at the moment of hesitation a fresh regiment came on at the charge with a wild shout, bearing on the others in front of them. Four regiments rushed on thus to their death--three thousand men in three hundred yards. In the redoubt the Turks fought with that calm, desperate fatalism which makes such grand soldiers of the followers of Mahomed.

Theodore Trist, standing on the scarp of a second redoubt two hundred and fifty yards to the rear, wrote rapidly in his book, his mouth quivering with excitement. At last he could stand it no longer.

'By God!' he exclaimed hoarsely, 'I have never seen anything like this!'

And shouting incoherently, he ran down the slope towards the redoubt.

At this moment Skobeleff came charging up at the head of his last reserve, a mere handful of sharpshooters. Trist saw the general fall and roll over with his stricken horse. A great throb seemed to choke him, and he barely realized that Skobeleff was on his feet again leading on his men, waving his sword and shrieking like a madman. A moment later the Englishman was borne uphill before a rushing mass of Turks, black with powder, voiceless, inhuman in their fury. The redoubt was lost!

But Trist did not give way to the general panic. The instinct of journalism was too strong in him, and he stood for a moment between the two redoubts looking on with practised eyes. He knew exactly how many men had been defending the position now lost, and was busy counting roughly the small number of fugitives. In certain corners of the redoubt the fight was still going on, but the Turks in there were no better than dead men.

While he was still there a Russian non-commissioned officer picked up the rifle of a Turk, and took aim at the solitary figure standing upon the slope, but Skobeleff knocked away the barrel with his sword.

'Not that man, my child!' he exclaimed, in a voice hoarse with shouting. 'I know him. Let the story of this fight be told!'

The artillery fire had ceased all round, and for a moment there was a great silence in the valley, only broken by the moan of the dying and an occasional rifle-shot here and there. It was almost as if the living stood aghast--ashamed and cowering before their Maker, by the side of their grim handiwork. And so darkness came over the land, covering the hideousness of it with a merciful veil.

'They cannot possibly hold it!' Trist said to an officer who accosted him as he made his way--dazed and stupefied--back into the town. 'It is untenable.'

This was no idle attempt at consolation. The Russian general had obeyed orders, but now he knew that his gallant work had been all in vain. By itself the redoubt was useless, for it was fully exposed to the Turkish fire, and there was no material at hand to reconstruct it, had his weary men been equal to the task, which they were not. During the night he sent, again and again, for reinforcements, which were persistently withheld, and at dawn he pluckily prepared to defend the position as best he might with the remainder of his own army-corps.

Trist had said that when Osman and Skobeleff met there would be war indeed, and the result proved with terrible reality that he had spoken naught else but the truth.

At daybreak the fight began again. The restless Turkish leader had made all his arrangements during the night. Exposed as it was to a galling fire from all sides, it seemed impossible that the redoubt could be held. But Skobeleff was there, and under Skobeleff the Russians have fought as they never did before.

At Turkish headquarters there was little or no anxiety, for the enemy could not afford to take another redoubt at such a cost, and so skilfully had the fortifications been planned, that there was no reason to suppose that further advances could be made more easily.

'To-morrow,' Osman had said to his chief of staff, 'it must be retaken!' and the young officer merely nodded his head. Then with the pencil that he carried stuck into his fez above his eye, the Turkish commander proceeded to write out his instructions.

At daybreak the fight began again, and the sun had not yet lost its matutinal ruddiness when the first organized attack was made. This was repulsed, and the same fate attended four subsequent attempts. No man but Skobeleff could have held that position for so long. As usual, there was something unique and original in his style of defence. He waited until the attacking force was almost within forty yards before firing, and then met them with one crashing volley, the sound of which rose to the firmament like the crack of doom. After that the roll of fire swept from side to side, from end to end, with a continuous grating rattle like the sweep of a scythe in hay.

The short day was almost drawing to a close, when the remnant of the fifth attacking corps returned, baffled and disheartened. The sun had already disappeared behind a bank of purple cloud, through which gleamed bars of lurid gold low down upon the rounded hills. Overhead there was a shimmering haze of Indian red. It almost seemed as if the sky had caught the reflection of the blood-stained earth.

To the ears of the Turks came the distant sound of voices hoarsely cheering. The sound was of no great strength, for Skobeleff himself had been voiceless all day, and the remainder--a mere handful of black-faced, wild madmen--were dry and parched.

'They must be nearly worn out,' said Osman quietly, upon receiving the latest report. 'We will attack again, and take the redoubt before nightfall.'

Tefik merely acquiesced without comment, as was his wont, and turned away to give his orders with a close precision which inspired great confidence in his subordinates.

Presently he returned to where his chief was standing, not far removed from Theodore Trist, who was writing hard upon a gun-carriage.

'They want somebody to lead them,' said Tefik significantly. His contempt for the usual run of portly, comfortable Turkish line-officers was well known.

Trist looked up and saw that the commander was looking at his subordinate with calmly questioning eyes.

'I,' said the Englishman, closing his note-book as he came forward, 'will go for one.'

'And I, and I, and I!' came from all sides. Some were staff-officers, some civilians, some old men and some mere boys.

'An Englishman,' said Tefik, with the faintest suggestion of a smile, 'is too valuable to be refused! It would make all the difference.'

'I have been idle long enough,' answered Trist, in a voice laden with suppressed excitement. 'I cannot stand it any longer.'

He closed his note-book, drew the elastic carefully over it, and raised his eyes to the strange, dishevelled group of men before him. The chief of this wonderful staff, Osman himself, held out his hand without a word, took the book, and dropped it into the pocket of his long blue cloak.

Already the call of the bugle told that preparations were in course--that the commander's orders were being executed.

* * * *

Before darkness lowered over the land the redoubt was again in the hands of the Turks. This is a matter of history--as also the fact that the flower of the Russian army lay all round Plevna for three months afterwards, and never gained an advantage equal to that which they had held for twenty-four hours. Osman was impregnable--Plevna unassailable, except by the slower weapon of bodily hunger--grim starvation.

It was nearly seven o'clock on the evening of the twelfth of September, before Tefik Bey, the grave young chief of staff, found time to visit the great double redoubt which had cost the Russian army over five thousand lives.

Accompanied by an orderly bearing a simple paraffin hurricane-lamp, he made his laborious way over the heaps of dead. Upon the hill above the redoubt the Turks lay in thousands. There were rows of them, shoulder to shoulder as they had charged, marking the effect of Skobeleff's terrible volleys. Below the defence, upon the lower slope, the Russians covered the earth, and in the redoubt itself Moslem and Christian lay entangled in the throes of death. They were literally piled on the top of each other--a very storehouse of the dead--for the Russians had fought all day standing upon the bodies of the slain. Now the ready Turks trampled countryman and foe alike beneath their feet, for it was by no means certain that an attempt might not be made at once to regain the coveted position.

While crossing a ditch, that had been hastily cut by the Russians, Tefik stopped suddenly.

'Give me the lantern!' he said, in a peculiar short way.

Then he stooped over the body of a man who lay face downwards upon the blood-soaked turf.

'Turn him over!'

The flame of the hurricane-lamp flickered ruddily, and lighted up a calm, bland face. The firm lips were slightly parted in a smile, which seemed to be, in some subtle way, interrogative in its tendency. The eyes were wide open, but not unpleasantly so, and their expression was one of meek, gentle surprise. The whole incongruous face as it reposed there, looking upwards to its Creator, seemed to say, 'Why?'

Tefik rose to his full height.

'Le philosophic,' he murmured, with a little shake of the head. 'Ah! but that is a pity--a thousand pities!'

He stood with the lamp in his hand, gazing upwards at the stars, now peeping out in the rifts of heavy cloud. Unconsciously he had turned his grave young eyes to the West--towards civilization and England.

After a moment he turned and went on his way, stumbling in the dark over the dead and wounded.