Under the Red Crescent. John Sandes
by the recollections of those plaintive Bulgarian airs and of the low, rich voices of the dark-eyed singers. The Turk, though an excellent fellow in many respects, has peculiar notions in the matter of voice production, and to hear a group of them all singing in unison through their noses as they squatted on the ground round a camp-fire was an experience to which one had to get accustomed before one could thoroughly enjoy it. It was a pleasant variety to exchange the nasal tenor squeak of the Turkish Tommy Atkins for the soft contralto of a Bulgarian blanchisseuse.
One of the principal sights of Nish is a squarely built brick tower covered over with plaster, in which are set three thousand Servian skulls. This ghastly trophy, which is about fifty years old, celebrates a long forgotten victory. The heads were stuck there freshly shorn from the shoulders of the Servians, and the whole grim monument reminds one of those sámadhs, or cenotaphs of heads, of which Kipling gives such a vivid description in one of his "Departmental Ditties."
Our party was joined at Nish by a son of the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel FitzGeorge, and a Captain James, who had come over with him from Widdin. I bought a capital grey pony from James for £8, and I always fancy that he imagined I had got at him over the bargain. However, caveat emptor is an admirable maxim in horse-dealing; and the law presumably imagines the vendor capable of looking after himself, as no maxim has been framed for his guidance. At any rate the grey pony stood me in good stead; and in our nightly race home from the mineral spring, or the particular Bulgarian village which we happened to be patronizing with a visit, I generally finished in the first three. It was a flat race of course, for you can walk from one end of the country to the other without meeting a fence of any kind.
At night after dinner the entire British medical staff at Nish, supported by FitzGeorge and James, were in the habit of discussing the Eastern Question in all its bearings, not from the outside point of view of the unprejudiced observer, but with the keenness of people who felt that they had a close personal interest in the solution of the problem. There were not wanting alarmists, who took the cheerful view that, if disaster overtook the Turkish arms, the exasperated Turks would turn their swords against the Giaours in their own ranks, and we should all get our throats cut for our pains.
One of the speakers who invariably ranged himself on the side of the minority in these discussions, and whose chief delight it was to be the Ishmael of debate with his hand against every man and every man's hand against him, was an extraordinary man named Foley, who quarrelled violently with every one of us except, I think, myself. Afterwards, just before the Russian war broke out, the poor fellow met a tragic end. He was quartered near Sistova in a Bulgarian house on the bank of the Danube, and it was found one morning that he had disappeared. His fate was a mystery which was never cleared up; and whether he drowned himself in the Danube, or was knocked on the head by some wandering Circassians, we were never able to find out. Another of my comrades at Nish was Ralph Leslie, a Canadian, who has had a fairly adventurous career, and was afterwards with Stanley on the Congo. He was a nice young fellow; but he used to read Gil Blas to me in French when I was in bed at night and required all my energies to circumvent the strategy of the Bulgarian insects.
An incident occurred one afternoon which came near terminating seriously for some of us, and it forms a good illustration of the dangers which the travelling Briton incurs as often as not through his own pig-headedness. S—— and I, with three or four more of the medical staff, were walking down the main street in plain clothes after lunch, when we noticed half a dozen Turkish soldiers engaged in cleaning the street. They were scooping up the liquid mud in great shovels, and throwing it into a cart drawn up near the footpath. A good share of every shovelful of mud came down on the footway, and as we approached S—— shouted to them in English to "knock off" whilst we went past. They either did not or would not understand, and before we had gone three steps farther my companion's Bond Street tweed suit received a liberal baptism of black mud from the shovel wielded by a dour old Turk, the ugliest of the party. S—— lost his temper, and sent in a heavy left-hander, which caught the old fellow on the point of the jaw, and landed him kicking on his back in the middle of the road. The whole gang at once raised a yell, and rushed us with their shovels, while we had to rely upon our fists alone for our defence. Matters were beginning to look very ugly indeed, when a Turkish lieutenant who knew us rushed up, and drawing his sword interposed himself between ourselves and our assailants, who retired in disorder under a vigorous volley of Turkish maledictions. It was a close thing for us all the same, and the adventurous career which I had marked out before me came perilously near to being abruptly terminated by an inglorious end at the hands of an infuriated scavenger.
But this same S——, capable man as he was at his profession and good-hearted fellow to boot, had an unhappy knack of getting into difficulties, and his death resulted eventually as an indirect consequence of a mysterious quarrel which he had with a Turkish major under circumstances which I recollect with great distinctness. While we were at Nish, one of the British surgeons attached to the general hospital, Howard Keen by name, was quartered in a fine Bulgarian house, which he shared with a Turkish major, whose name it is not necessary to mention. S—— and I went up to spend the evening with them; and as it was a bitterly cold night with snow on the ground outside, Keen advised me to stop with him, and camp in his half of the house, which I did. At about twelve o'clock I wrapped myself in my heavy military overcoat lined with wolf-skin, and lay down to sleep on the floor in front of the fire in Keen's room, while Keen also went to sleep on his camp-bed. We left S—— and the Turkish major drinking raki together in the major's room at the other side of the house.
As the fire was burning low I woke with a start to find the Bulgarian owner of the house standing over me in a state of violent agitation, gesticulating wildly and repeating again and again some words of the meaning of which I had not the faintest notion. He was holding in his hand a revolver which belonged to S——. I guessed at once that something was wrong; and fearing that S—— had got the worse for liquor and insulted the Bulgarian's wife, I woke Keen, who ran out in his shirt and trousers to the other side of the house. I followed him almost immediately, and he yelled out to me to come to the major's quarters at once. I rushed in, and found the major in a state of tremendous excitement, chewing his big black moustache and hurriedly buckling on his sword. Guessing that S—— had got into trouble again, I sang out to him to clear out; but as I did so the door opened, and in he walked as white as a sheet. The major drew his revolver, and fired at S—— point-blank, but the bullet missed its mark; and before he could pull the trigger again, Keen and I had closed with him, and for about two minutes the inside of that Bulgarian's sitting-room was about the hottest corner I have ever been in. The Turk was a big, powerful fellow, and he was mad with raki; while Keen and I were both tough, and in pretty good form. Over and over on the floor we rolled, the Turk trying to throttle us, while we hung to him like a couple of bull-terriers, and gradually wore him out. At last we had him fairly beaten, and, grabbing his revolver, we blew out the light and fled, taking S—— with us, and locking the door behind us. S—— staggered off to his own quarters; but when the morning came, he was found lying in the snow outside his own door, and the exposure brought on an attack of inflammation of the lungs, from which he eventually died. In the morning we tried in vain to find out the cause of the quarrel; but neither S—— nor the major would tell us. I think the Bulgarian knew, but he kept his own counsel.
One night in Nish I met a very remarkable Turkish officer named Ahmet Bey, who was introduced to me as a man who had killed seven Servians with his own sword during the final attack upon Alexinatz. I never in my life saw a man with such a magnificent physique. He was very handsome, splendidly proportioned, and of astounding physical strength. A few days before I met him he had been the hero of a feat about which all the troops in Nish were still talking. It seemed that Abdul Kerim Pasha, the commander-in-chief, while inspecting the troops one morning, casually expressed a wish that he could capture a Servian prisoner from the Servian lines. Ahmet Bey, who overheard the remark, rode up, and, saluting, asked to be permitted to get the commander a prisoner. Abdul Kerim wonderingly gave the required permission, and Ahmet Bey without another word wheeled his charger, dashed the spurs into his flanks, and galloped off in front of the astonished detachment straight for the nearest Servian outpost. As he approached the Servian lines half a dozen rifles cracked, for the Servian vedettes opened fire upon