Under the Red Crescent. John Sandes
my arguments beat unheeded against the rocks of their Oriental stolidity, and the logic of the whole British Medical Society would not have sufficed to persuade the principal eunuch to let me see that unknown lady's tongue. With that thick curtain between us, it was a case of Pyramus and Thisbe and the wall; so I abandoned my quest after the unattainable, and lost the only chance that I—plausible Giaour though I was—ever obtained of seeing the inside of a real Turkish harem. Probably the lady was eventually treated by a hakem bashi, or Turkish physician and surgeon, many of whom are very clever in their own way, or by a jarra bashi, a sort of "legally qualified medical practitioner," who is recognized as a person entitled to prescribe, but whose abilities do not go much further than drawing teeth or fixing up sore feet.
From Sofia our regiment pushed on to Pirot, close to the Servian border, where we were brigaded with two other regiments of infantry and strengthened by a battery of artillery, our mission being to defend the road into Servia in case of a flank attack. We camped in the hills; and as I had little work to do, I spent most of my time shooting hares with the colonel's double-barrelled gun, and also duck, which were very plentiful. In the evenings I learned to smoke the narghileh, and I also improved my scanty knowledge of Turkish as best I could with the aid of Mehemet Ali.
At last we got orders to leave, and at daybreak we struck camp. The last that we saw of this pleasant resting-place was the flame of our burning camp-stables of brushwood, to which we set fire before we started on our new march.
After a stay at Ak Palanka, we were moved on to Nish, the headquarters of the Turkish army; and here I met several English surgeons, who had been despatched to the seat of war by the Red Cross Society in England. Among them was Armand Leslie, who was afterwards killed in Egypt, in the rout and massacre of Baker's poltroon levies while marching from Trinkitat towards Tokar; and a couple of others, Litton Forbes and Dr. S——, whom I got to know very well. At this time Nish formed the base of our army, and the wounded were brought back to us from Alexinatz, where the fighting was going on. The first sight of those poor fellows, gashed with sabre and bayonet, torn with shell, and riddled with rifle-bullets, made me realize the actuality of the conflict in which I was there to assist.
Life in camp was irksome enough; but I found a difficulty in getting out of it, for while one of our majors, Edhim Effendi, was a jolly, good-humoured fellow, who was not above a glass of liquor when he could get it, the other, Izzet Effendi, was a dry, fanatical Turk, who spent most of his time at his prayers, and always looked upon me as an infidel. Izzet Effendi refused to allow me to go into the town; but I appealed to the colonel, and, having secured his permission, I took up my quarters in Nish with S—— and Litton Forbes. Then I was drafted to look after the general hospital, and I left the regiment altogether.
There were about twenty of us in all on the surgical staff, and the hospital arrangements were excellent. It was here that I performed my first big operation, the patient being a Turkish infantryman who was brought in from Alexinatz with his knee shattered by a shell. He refused to take chloroform, and I took his leg off above the knee without any anæsthetic. He never said a word, and went on smoking a cigarette all the time. When the captain came round with his notebook afterwards to take down the name, age, and regiment of each wounded man, my patient answered all the questions quietly and unconcernedly while I was stitching up the flap of skin over the stump. It was a marvellous exhibition of fortitude, and a striking illustration of the mettle of the men whom I was soon to see charging with such splendid courage upon the bayonets of the Russians.
CHAPTER II.
THE PRELIMINARIES TO THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.
Prince Czetwertinski—A Romantic Career—His First Commission—A Retrospect—The History of a Noble Pole—From Monte Carlo to Brisbane—A Prince as a Deck Hand on a Schooner—A Bush Tutor—He returns to Europe—The Load of Poverty—Lighter to Bear in Australia—A Big Win at Flemington—School Teaching in Batavia—Back to New South Wales—Death at Wagga—The Vale of Moravia—The Hot Spring—Bulgarian Blanchisseuses—Slavonian Folk-songs—How the Turks sing—A Bulgarian Sámadh—Foley's End—Infuriated Scavengers—A Mysterious Disturbance—Rough-and-tumble Fighting—A Turkish Hercules—Capturing a Prisoner—A Solitary Ride—A Bulgarian Farrier—Back to Sofia—Christmas in the Snow—A Maize Cob for a Christmas Dinner—Orkhanieh to Sofia—A Doctor frozen to Death—Bitter Experiences—Salutary Effects of a Good Dinner.
At Nish I first met a young soldier whose remarkable personality and singularly adventurous life could not fail to attract attention, and with whom I formed a close personal friendship, which was only ended by his death barely a year ago. Prince Czetwertinski, whom I first saw mounted on a magnificent black charger in the main street of Nish, belonged to one of the oldest families in Russian Poland, and was himself the head of the family. His mother had been living at Lemberg in Galicia, and the young prince had been educated in France, and afterwards at a military school in Prague, with the object of entering the Austrian army. At the last moment, however, the Russian Government intervened, deeming it unwise to allow a Polish prince, who, though a Russian subject, was as hostile at heart to Russia as were all his countrymen, to accept an Austrian commission. The official world of St. Petersburg set its face against Czetwertinski, and refused to furnish him with the necessary papers; so that when the Servian war broke out he gladly seized the chance of taking service against the Russians, the traditional foes of his Polish house, proud still, although its glories had been sadly tarnished.
Young Czetwertinski was well received at the court of the Emperor of Austria, and was admitted to the intimacy of Prince Metternich; but there were grave difficulties in the way of the military career upon which he had set his heart. At last, however, through the kind offices of General Klapka, the well known Hungarian general, who was on friendly terms with the Turkish Government, the young prince secured an entrance to military life, and was appointed, not to a commission, but to the grade of private in a Turkish cavalry regiment, in which capacity he had at first to perform the most menial offices. When Alexinatz was taken in October, 1876, it was Czetwertinski who brought the news to Nish; and for his conduct in the engagement he received a captaincy, and also the decoration of the fifth order of the Medjidie. He was a magnificent rider, and his victory over a vicious black stallion that no one in the regiment could sit was a good passport to the affections of the Turks, who dearly love fine horsemanship. I met him afterwards at Widdin, and got to know him intimately. At that time he was captain of a guard of eighty troopers attached to the person of Osman Pasha; and the colonel of his regiment, a man named Mustapha Bey, was himself a Pole, who had fled to Turkey as a boy, entered the Turkish service, and become a Mohammedan. Czetwertinski fell ill at Plevna of dysentery, and passed through my hands, afterwards coming to live with me in the Bulgarian house where I was quartered, and bringing his servant Faizi with him. As the young cavalry officer was attached to the person of Osman Pasha, I was kept au courant with all that was going on; and it was through him that I was enabled chiefly to know and admire the courage, the honour, the high military ability, and the pure patriotism of the great chief under whom we both served.
Czetwertinski fought with signal bravery in all the engagements that took place at Plevna, and on one occasion had his horse killed under him at Pelischat—the famous black stallion that none but he could ride.
He was afterwards selected for his knowledge of French to act as parlementaire, and visited the Russian headquarters in that capacity with Tewfik Pasha. Before I left Plevna, Czetwertinski was sick and wounded; so I sent him down invalided to Constantinople together with Victor Lauri, a German artist, who had chummed in with us on the field. Had Czetwertinski been left behind at Plevna, he would infallibly have been shot by the Russians for a deserter, as Skobeleff himself, who met him at a dinner party after the war was over, assured him.
I said good-bye to Prince Czetwertinski, or, as he used to call himself, Mehemet Bey, at Constantinople, and lost sight of him, as I thought, for ever; but years afterwards—it was in 1884—I found a note at my house in Melbourne saying that Mehemet Bey