A company officer was making his round of an outlying picket of Grenadiers; the black hour before a drizzling dawn effectually shrouded moist features and sodden whiskers, as bearskin and greatcoat served to modify an erect yet incorrigibly casual carriage. It was Ralph Devenish, however, and he was performing his duties with some punctilio. The sentries stood their twenty paces apart, all but invisible to each other, sundered links waiting for the dawn to complete the chain. And at each link the officer halted and beat his foot.
"All's well."
"Except your rifle, eh?" muttered Devenish to one or two; from a third he took the man's dripping piece, and from the nipple poured a tiny jet of water into the palm of his left hand. "Keep it covered if you can, or it will never go off," was his audible injunction to that sentry and the next. One who knew him would have marveled at such zeal and such initiative in Ralph Devenish.
One who knew him did.
"All's well."
"Except your musket, I expect. Let's see it. You know my voice?" It had dropped with the question.
"I do."
"I suppose you thought I didn't recognize you?"
"I didn't know."
"Well, I did, and had you put on this picket on purpose to get a word with you; but don't you raise your voice any more than I'm raising mine," whispered Devenish in one breath, with a louder comment on the condition of the rifle in his next. "What are you doing here?" he added in his strenuous undertone. "When did you land in England?"
"The last morning of September."
"So it made you enlist."
"The same night."
"Yet you got out in the draft."
"I knew my drill. It's a long story."
"It must be! You've been bribing the sergeants, or somebody; but I don't blame you for that. Try to keep the nipple covered," said the zealous officer, returning the piece. "Why the devil did you choose my regiment?" whispered Ralph.
"It was the night the news came of the Alma--and--I hoped you were killed!"
"No wonder." Ralph chuckled harshly.
"It was one to me; but I couldn't help it, and I felt in every other battle it would be the same. So I enlisted that night."
"To make sure, eh?" sneered Ralph.
"To run your risks!" said Denis through his teeth. "The chances are that one of us will go back. The chances are less that we both will!"
The rain took up the whispering for the next few seconds.
"I see!" said Ralph at length. "The latest thing in duels! Well, my congratulations must keep till next round." And he marched on nonchalantly enough, with a final chuckle for Denis's salute; but the note was neither so harsh nor so spontaneous as before; and Denis was left to glory in his last words, to regret them, and yet to glory in them again.
The rain sank into his bearskin, pattered on his shoulders, and made quite a report when it beat upon a boot; the next sentry was to be heard answering questions about his rifle, and Denis wondered if he himself could be the sole cause of the unusual inquisition. The officer passed on out of earshot; other noises of the waning night returned to recapture the attention. The dismal watches had long been redeemed by a series of exciting sounds from within the enemy's lines. The belfries of Sebastopol had first united in discordant peals; and from that hour the outposts had heard low rumblings, distant, intermittent, but now more distinct than ever, and something nearer to the ear. A dull gray light was beginning to weld the links in the chain of bearskins and greatcoats that stretched across the soaking upland. And by degrees the dark night lifted on a raw and dripping fog, almost as impenetrable as itself.
A patter of invisible musketry sounded in the direction of Inkerman heights, increased to a fusillade, but came no nearer; the Grenadier outposts were withdrawn, and in the misty dawn the company fell in with other two of the Guards Brigade. As they did so a level rainbow curved through the fog, and some one shouted "Shell!" Every man stood his ground upright, but as the shell skimmed over their heads, and sank spinning into the soft ground beyond, a number flung themselves upon their faces, and lay like ninepins until it burst without hitting one.
"Stand up, stand up!" cried a sergeant with a cheese-cutter on the back of his red head. "You're not in the trenches now, and that's sugar-plums to what you're goin' to get. Look over there!"
On the plain beneath the high plateau occupied by the three companies, the Russian cavalry could be seen below the rising fog, advancing obliquely on the northern heights, preceded by a cloud of skirmishers.
Nothing threatened the outpost of Guards; no more shot or shell fell among them; and word came for them to march back to camp in order to draw cartridges and exchange their dripping muskets for dry.
It was no welcome order to the picket, already further from the action than their gallantry could bear. Heavy firing on the northern heights convinced them that the bulk of the Brigade were already hotly engaged.
Yet a whole company of Grenadiers and two of the Coldstream had to start the day by turning their backs upon friend and foe and din of battle.
"Never mind, boys," cried the sergeant in the cheese-cutter. "It'll be your turn directly, and meanwhile you can say your prayers, for you'll be smelling hell before you're an hour older!"
Denis, for one, would have given a good deal to have been spared this delay before battle of which he had heard so much. He found it as trying as report maintained. He could not but think of his last words to Ralph Devenish, and as Ralph marched aloof he looked as though he might be thinking of them too. Denis began to suffer from a sort of superstitious shame: he deserved to be the one to remain upon the field. He was grateful to his rear-rank man, a Cockney, and a consistent grumbler, for a running commentary of frivolous complaint.
"I 'ope they'll give us time for a cup o' cawfee--if yer call it cawfee," said he. "Green cawfee-beans ground between stones--I call it muck. But 'ot muck's better 'n nothink w'en you've 'ad no warm grub in yer innards for twenty-four hours. But wot do you 'ave in this God-forsaken 'ole? Not a wash, not a shave, no pipe-clayin', no button-cleanin', no takin' belts or boots off by the day an' night together!"
The deserted encampment was far from an inspiriting spectacle. Denis kept outside his tent; the idea of a farewell visit was not to be resisted; but a tough biscuit munched in the open air, and a dry rifle handled as the rain ceased falling, were solid comforters. At last the companies fell in, and swung out of camp with a cheer, greatcoats and bearskins, red plumes and white, as briskly and symmetrically as through the streets of London.
"'Remember, remember, the fifth o' November!'" said the red-haired sergeant. "So you never knew Guy Fawkes was a Rooshian? You hark at 'em keepin' the day!"
Indeed, the firing was growing louder every minute. It was still nearly all in one direction, on the heights where the fog clung thickest, and whither the three companies were now tramping through the fog.
"I wish they'd remember the seventh day, an' keep _it_ 'oly," grumbled Denis's rear-rank man. "I s'pose you godless chaps 've forgot it's yer Sunday out? I don't forget it's mine, darn their dirty skins!"
A horse's hoofs came thudding through the fog, a scarlet coat burst through it like the sun.
"The Duke says you're to join your battalion," cried the staff-officer to Devenish. "They're hard pressed at the two-gun battery up above."
Devenish wheeled round, and his handsome face was transfigured as he waved his sword.
"They want us with the colours!" he shouted. "They can't do without us after all!"
And with a laugh and a yell the men sprang forward, the sergeant's face as red as his hair, even the grumbler pressing on Denis's heels, and perhaps only Denis himself with a single thought beyond coming at once to the rescue of the regiment and to grips with the shrouded foe. But Denis had been near Ralph when he turned, near enough to note the radiant look, to catch the smiling eye, and his country's enemy was blotted out of mind by his own. Had he done Devenish justice after all?
Was his behaviour as base as it had seemed? Was that shining and fearless face the face of a bad man and a coward? Handsome, joyous, and brave, as strangely ennobled as some faces after death, could any woman have seen this one now, she might rather have forgiven it any crime!
So thought Denis to himself as he marched in chill silence among his yelling comrades. He had not been with them at the Alma. It was his first battle, and as yet it had only begun to the ear; not a man had been hit before his eyes, not a flash had penetrated the pale mist ahead upon the heights. Yet the mist was paler than it had ever been; and to the right, over the green valley of the Tchernaya, whence it had risen in patches, there was a faint round radiance in the pall. None noticed it; all eyes were straining through the haze in front of them; but of a sudden, as the bearskins breasted a ridge, the sun broke forth upon an astounding tableau.
Under a canopy of mist and smoke, belt-deep in sparkling bushes raked by the risen sun, a thin line of Guardsmen were holding their own against dense masses of the enemy. Between the Russians and the lip of the plateau in their rear, over which they were still swarming by the battalion, rose the dismantled redoubt whose empty embrasures were open doors to the attacking horde. Weight of numbers had wrested the work from the British--but that was all. Instead of pressing this advantage, the enemy had set his back to the parapet of sandbags, overlapping it in dense wings, and so standing at bay in his thousands against a few hundred Grenadiers. The lingering mist and the smoke of battle were doubtless in favour of the few; only the remnant of their own brigade, approaching obliquely from their rear, could see how few they were; and for an instant the sight appalled them. It was a hedge of bearskins and cheese-cutters against a forest of muffin-caps and cross-belts, and between them a road narrowing to a few yards at the end nearer the relieving handful. Rifles flashed and smoke floated along either line; uncouth yells were answered by hoarse curses and by savage cheers; and Guardsmen who had fired away their sixty rounds were hurling rocks and stones across a lane so narrow that there was scarcely a yard between the sprawling dead of either side.
Such was the grim gray scene upon which the three companies appeared.
The rank and file were in their greatcoats almost to a man; but here and there were a scarlet tunic and a flashing sword; and in the centre of the line, in the swirl of smoke and mist, staggered a crimson standard and a Union Jack.
"Our colours!" screamed Devenish, racing ahead of his men. There was no need for him to tell them. The gray pack were yelling at his heels, and Denis saw but dimly as he ran roaring with the rest.
The thin line heard them; a couple of officers glanced over their epaulettes, saw the red plumes of the Coldstream outnumbering the white plumes of the Grenadiers, and tossed their swords in a sudden passion of jealousy. "Charge again, Grenadiers!" they roared, and leaped into the lane with the whole gray wave rolling after them. And with bayonets down and wild hurrahs the battalion drove straight into the redoubt, trampling the dead, and driving the living through the two embrasures as a green sea is emptied through lee scuppers.
Simultaneously the mass of Russians to the north of the battery were routed by a charge of the Scots Fusiliers at the far end of the line of Guards; and now the Coldstreamers blooded themselves upon the companion wing extending from the southern shoulder of the redoubt; but Devenish and his Grenadiers had followed their own into the redoubt itself, and Denis was leaning with his back against the parapet, brushing the sweat from his forehead and cleaning his bayonet in the earth.
There was no more moisture in his eyes. The emotional effect of the spectacle had yielded in an instant to the ferocious frenzy of the deed.
Yet, as he leaned panting in the momentary pause, there was enough still to be seen, and more than enough to do. A quartermaster-sergeant arrived with a tray of refreshments on his shoulders, and a Grenadier in the act of helping himself was shot down as though by one of his own comrades.