harboured the thought that, without deliverance brought by a relieving force, a humble Turkish fortress would be able to hold out against the collected strength of Russia, and the most renowned of her generals. Soon, it was known that of their own free will and humours two young Englishmen, Captain Butler, of the Ceylon Rifles, and Lieutenant Nasmyth, of the East India Company's Service, had thrown themselves into the place, and were exercising a strange mastery over the garrison. On one of the hills overlooking the town there was a seam of earth which as though it were a kind of low fence designed and thrown up by a peasant-passed along three sides of the slope in a doubtful, meandering course. This was the earthwork which soon became famous in Europe. It was I called the Arab Tabia. The work was one of a slight and rude sort; but the ground it stood on was judged to be needful to the besiegers, and, at almost any cost of life to his people, Prince Paskievitch resolved to seize it. By diligent fighting on the hill-side, by sapping close up to the ditch, by springing mines which more than once blew in the counterscarp and levelled the parapet, by storming it in the daytime, by storming it at night, the Russians strove hard to carry the work; but when they sprang a mine, they ever found that behind the ruins the Turks stood retrenched; and whether they stormed it by day or by night, their masses of columns were always met fiercely, were always driven back with a cruel slaughter. Prince Paskievitch, the General Commanding in Chief, and General Schilders, who commanded the siege works, were both struck down by shot and disabled. On the side of the Turks, Mussa Pasha, who commanded the garrison, was killed, but Butler and Nasmyth, now obeyed with a touching affection and trustfulness by the Ottoman soldiery, were equal to the historic occasion which they had had the fortune and the spirit to seize. At one time they were laying down some new work of defence. At another, the two firm lads were governing the judgment of the Turkish commanders in a council of war. Sometimes, with ear pressed to the earth, they were listening for the dull blows of the enemy's underground pickaxes. Now and then, they were engaged in dragging to his place under fire some unworthy Turkish commander; and once in their sportive and English way they were busy in getting together a sweepstakes, to be won by him who should name the day when Silistria would be relieved; but always when danger gathered in the Arab Tabia, the grateful Turks looked and saw that their young English guests were amongst them, ever ready with counsel for the new emergency, forbidding all thought of sur render, and even, it seems, determined to lay rough hands on the general who sought to withdraw with his troops from the famous earthwork. It seemed that the presence of these youths was all that was needed for making of the Moslem hordes a faithful, heroic, and devoted soldiery. Upon ground known to be mined they stood as tranquilly as upon any other hill-side. "It was impossible," said Nasmyth's successor in the Arab Tabia-"it was impossible not to admire the cool indifference of the Turks to danger. Three men were shot in the space of five minutes while throwing up earth for the new parapet, at which only two men could work at a time, so as to be at all protected; and they were succeeded by the nearest bystander, who took the spade from the dying man's hands, and set to work as calmly as if he were going to cut a ditch by the road-side.” Indeed, the child-like trust which these men were able to put in their young English leaders, so freed them from all doubt and question concerning the wisdom of the orders given, that they joyfully abandoned themselves to the rapture of fighting for religion, and grew so enamoured of death-so enamoured of the very blackness of the grave, that sometimes in the pauses of the fight a pious Mussulman, intent on close fighting and blissful thoughts of Paradise, would come up with a pickaxe in hand, would speak some touching words of devotion and gratitude to Butler and Nasmyth, and then proudly fall to work and dig for himself the last home, where he charged his comrades to lay him as soon as he attained to die. Omar Pasha not choosing to march to the relief of Silistria, but being unwilling to leave its defenders to sheer despair, sent General Cannon (Behram Pasha he was called in the Turkish army) with a brigade of irregular light infantry, and instructed him to occupy some of the wooded ground in the neighbourhood of the place, with a view to trouble the enemy, and to encourage the garrison. General Cannon, however, learnt on reaching the neighbourhood of Silistria, that the hopes of the garrison had already ebbed very low; and therefore, though without the warrant of orders, he resolved to throw himself into the place with his whole brigade. This, by means of a stratagem and a long, circuitous night-march, he was able to do. His achievement, as was natural, gave joy to the garrison; and turning to account the enthusiasm of the moment, he administered, as is said, a direful oath to the Pasha in command-an oath whereby the Turk swore that, happen what might, he would never surrender the place. It was whilst General Cannon was in Silistria that Captain Butler received the wound of which he afterwards died. The Russians had sapped up LOVE AMONG THE RUINS. so close to the ditch that, if a man behind the parapet spoke much above a whisper, the sound of his voice used to draw the enemy's fire to. wards the nearest loophole or embrasure. Captain Butler, it seems, with a view to throw up a new work of defence, was reconnoitring the enemy's approaches through an aperture made in the parapet, and in consulting about his plan with General Cannon, he spoke loud enough to be heard by a Russian marksman, for the sound of his voice brought a rifle-ball in through the loophole, and struck him the blow from which (being weakened by toil and privation) he died before the end of the siege. For some reason which he deemed to be imperative-stringent orders, perhaps from Schumla -General Cannon marched out of the place with his brigade on the 17th of June, and at his request Nasmyth also went away for a time, in order to confer with Omar Pasha at the Turkish head-quarters; but meanwhile, Lieutenant Ballard, of the Indian army, coming thither of his own free will, had thrown himself into the besieged town, and whenever the enemy stirred, there was always 83 at the least one English lad in the Arab Tabia, directing the counsels of the garrison, repressing the thought of surrender, and keeping the men in good heart. There was a part of the allied camp where the French and the English soldiery could hear, in a quiet hour, the distant guns of Silistria. Day after day they listened for the continuing of the sound, and they listened keenly, for they were expecting the end, and there was nothing but tho booming of the cannon to assure them that the fortress held out. On the 22nd of June, and during a great part of the night which followed it, they heard the low thunder of the siege more continuously than ever before; but on the dawn of the following day they listened, and listened in vain. The cannonade had ceased, and it was believed in camp that the place had been taken. The opposite of this was the truth. The siege had been raised. The event was one upon which the course of history was destined to hinge; for this miscarriage at Silistria put an end at once to all schemes for the invasion of the Sultan's dominions in Europe. Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech In one year they sent a million fighters forth And they built their gods a brazen pillar high Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force- Oh, heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood that burns! For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin! With their triumphs and their glories and the rest. THE RIDING TO THE TOURNAMENT.* [W. G. THORNBURY. See Page 54, Vol. I.] OVER meadows purple flower'd, Over white roads strewn with leaves, Over clover wet with dew, Past the mill-stream and the reeds Whispers as of rivers flowing, There were abbots fat and sleek, Grizzly knights with faces scarr'd, Charger with the massy chest, * By kind permission of the Author. When the king look'd, where she looks now, And they built their gods a brazen pillar high OVER meadows purple flower'd, Over white roads strewn with leaves, Over clover wet with dew, Past the mill-stream and the reeds Where the dry leaves shake and fall, Whispers as of rivers flowing, There were abbots fat and sleek, Grizzly knights with faces scarr'd, Charger with the massy chest, By kind permission of the Author. |