Kitabı oku: «Boris the Bear-Hunter», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XVI.
HOME AGAIN
One day, early in November 1695, when the palace of the Tsar in the Kremlin was thronged with officers and dignitaries awaiting audience in the ante-chambers, and crowding one another in the halls and passages, discussing the news and transacting various matters of state business, a tall but ragged-looking figure strode in at the principal entrance of the palace, pushing aside the doorkeepers, and elbowed his way through the crowded entrance-hall. Up the wide stairs he went, taking no notice of the protests and smothered curses of those whose toes he trod upon, or into whose sides he had insinuated his sharp elbows. Many of those who had turned round to see who this audaciously rough individual might be, stopped open-mouthed when they beheld him, the protest half-uttered, and gazed after him with wide eyes, muttering prayers, as men who believe they see a ghost. But the ragged courtier looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, but pursued his reckless march over the toes of the highest dignitaries in the realm, without noticing the fact or the persons, and making straight for the private cabinet of the Tsar as though, until he should reach that haven, there could be no thought for anything else.
Arrived at the ante-chamber, wherein were assembled Lefort and Menshikoff and a few others of the inner circle of favour, the new arrival paid no more heed to these august personages than he had done to the rest, but elbowed them out of his way and went straight to the door which led into the sanctum of the great Peter, altogether disregarding the exclamations of surprise and awe which were all that these found time to utter as he passed rapidly through the room and in at the Tsar's own door.
Peter was sitting alone at the writing-table, busily penning letters to foreign potentates—applications, in fact, for the loan of talented engineer and artillery officers for the new campaign against the Turk on the Black Sea; a project upon which his mind was so fixed that his whole time was spent in planning and organizing it in advance. The Tsar raised his eyes as the ragged figure entered the room and stood before his table. But though Peters eyes fixed themselves upon the strange, wild object before them, the speculation in them had nothing to do with the object of their regard. Peter lowered his head again and wrote; he finished his letter, and signed it. Then, once more he raised his eyes, and this time those orbs were looking outwards, not inwards. Peter started, and spat on the ground; then he crossed himself, and shaded his eyes, and stared at the figure that stood before him. For a moment the strong face looked scared and bewildered; then the Tsar rose with his big laugh, and walking round to the other side of the table caught the man by both shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled.
"It is true flesh and blood," he cried, "and no ghost! Boris, my most miraculous of bear-hunters, whence come you, and why is this ragged body of yours not eaten by Turkish rats? This is the best and most wonderful thing that mortal man ever heard of." Peter drew the grimy traveller to his own broad breast and embraced him in the most approved Russian manner, kissing both cheeks and his forehead.—"Here! Lefort, Menshikoff, all you fellows in there!" continued the Tsar, shouting aloud, "here's Boris come back, our faithful, Streltsi-sticking, Turk-spitting Bear-eater!—Come, sit down, my Boris, quickly, and tell us all about it. Why are you alive—have you a plan of Azof—how did you get out of the place—has that Yakooshka had his sneaking German tongue cut out of him yet? Tell me that first of all, quick!"
Boris replied that as far as he knew the head of Jansen was still upon his shoulders with his tongue in it.
"Then," said Peter, "we shall have at least the satisfaction of removing it ourselves instead of relinquishing the privilege to the Turk, as I had feared." Peter took two or three turns about the room, looking his blackest; then he recovered his equanimity. "Come," he said, "let's talk of pleasanter subjects; tell us all about your adventures."
Boris told his plain tale amid frequent interjections from the four or five men present. Peter roared with laughter over the account of how Boris with his sword had kept at bay for ten minutes any number of Turks who chose to come on, and how he was ultimately scragged by a pasha while in the very act of fainting from sheer exhaustion. "Bravo, Bear-eater," he cried, "and bravo again! Ho, if I had but five thousand bear-hunters like you, my son, I should attack Sweden to-morrow! But there is some good in the Turk after all; for think how easily any one of a thousand of them might have blown your brains out with musket or pistol. Yet they preferred to see a good fight out to the end; but, ha! ha! that pasha. You shall scrag that same pasha with your own hands, my son, next summer, as sure as I am standing here. Go on!"
Peter's pleasant mood underwent a great change when Boris went on to tell of his interview with Jansen in prison. His face worked in terrible contortions, and he rose and paced the room once more without a word. "So you would have throttled him, would you?" he said at last. "I am thankful that you did not interfere with what is my privilege. Enough about Yakooshka. Go on."
But the Tsar fairly roared with laughter as Boris described how he had leaped upon the back of the sentinel, a distance of fifteen feet, and stuck the poor fellow with his little broken bit of sword-end. He must have that little weapon, he said, as a keepsake from his good bear-eater. But nothing would satisfy the Tsar with regard to the mighty spring upon the back of the sentry but a rehearsal of the feat then and there, in that very room.
Menshikoff said the thing was impossible; no man, he said, could leap five yards from a cramped position upon a window ledge. Boris must have miscalculated the distance. But Menshikoff regretted this remark a moment after he had made it; for Peter declared he believed the bear-eater could perform the feat if no one else could, and that he should try it at once, in order to put this sceptic to confusion. Menshikoff should act the part of sentry, and walk along while Boris jumped on him. Afterwards they would all try it. Then two tables were piled together, and Boris was instructed to bend himself into the original position as far as possible, and thence spring upon the unhappy Menshikoff, who paced the floor at a distance of fifteen feet. Menshikoff eyed the heavy figure of Boris, soon to be launched at him, with gloomy foreboding; but there was no help for it, Peter was in earnest. As Menshikoff reached the necessary point, out sprang Boris, and without difficulty covering the distance, alighted with terrific force upon Menshikoff's back. Over rolled the favourite, and over went Boris with him, amid the boisterous laughter of the Tsar and the rest, the crash making such a commotion that frightened courtiers from the room beneath presently rushed in to see what had happened to his Majesty.
Peter insisted upon attempting the feat himself, and insisted also that Lefort and Menshikoff should leap as well. The Tsar easily accomplished the leap; but so tremendous was the shock of his descent, that poor Lefort, who was detailed to receive the ponderous imperial body after its flight through space, was well-nigh wiped out of the land of the living. Both Menshikoff and Lefort failed to accomplish the feat, and Boris was obliged to repeat it, in order that the Tsar might try the sensations of the sentinel, as a "bolt from the blue," in the shape of some thirteen stone of humanity, came crashing down upon his shoulders. Peter was better built to stand the shock than the unfortunate Turkish soldier, and Boris's big body hardly caused him to stagger; though when the two changed places, and the huge Tsar sprang through the air and alighted upon the back of Boris, that hardy young hunter, for all his sturdiness, rolled over like a rabbit.
Then at length the Tsar, now in the highest good-humour, permitted Boris to finish his tale—how he had plunged into the dark waters of the Azof Sea, and found his way to land; how he had been befriended in a village of the Cossacks of the Don—Peter making a note of the name of the village; and of his long adventurous journey through moor and forest, where he supplied himself with food from day to day by means of his knowledge of woodcraft, until he reached Moscow that very morning. Then the Tsar informed Boris of his own designs for a renewed siege of Azof by land and sea, and of all that had happened in the regiment and out of it since his disappearance. The officers had all mourned him as certainly lost, the Tsar said, and had even included his name in their service for the repose of the souls of those slain beneath the walls of the city; they would be overjoyed to see his face again. Then Peter told of how little Nancy Drury had come to scold him for losing "her Boris," and of how he had promised faithfully to go and fetch her friend home again in the summer. When Peter mentioned Nancy, the face of Boris flushed, but his eyes glowed with great tenderness; and presently he asked leave to retire, in order to visit his fellow-officers, "and others." The Tsar permitted him to go, on condition that he went first to see "those others;" for, said Peter, those others might be even more rejoiced to see him home again than the officers of the regiment, who, at least, had not blushed whenever his name had been mentioned. Then Boris blushed again, and thanked the Tsar, and went out to do his kind bidding.
When Boris reached the house of the Drurys, and was ushered into the sitting-room by the frightened servant, who took him for a ghost, and did not announce him because his tongue refused to speak for very fear, Mrs. Drury was busy over her needlework, while Nancy sat at her lessons at the same table. Mother and daughter looked up together, but their first impressions were entirely different. Mrs. Drury had never felt the slightest doubt that her little daughter's faithful friend was long since dead and buried in the far-away Tartar city, and had mourned his death in secret, while concealing her convictions from Nancy, in the hope that when the truth must be known time would have softened the blow. When, therefore, the door opened noiselessly, and the scared servant, speechless and pale, admitted the ragged figure which so strongly resembled the dead friend of the family, Mrs. Drury was taken by surprise, and screamed and hid her face in her hands. But Nancy's instincts did not err. No sooner did she raise her eyes than she knew that this was no ghost, but her own beloved and familiar friend; and with a cry of great joy and surprise she sprang to her feet, and was in his arms in a moment, her head buried in his tanned neck, sobbing and laughing, and conscious of nothing excepting that here was her Boris alive and well and come home again.
When Mrs. Drury recovered her equanimity, which she did in a minute, her English ideas of propriety were a little shocked at Nancy's undisguised demonstration towards her friend, and, after warmly greeting Boris, she reminded her little daughter that her fifteenth birthday was at hand, and that she would shock Boris Ivanitch by her demonstrativeness. But Boris begged her to let Nancy be as affectionate as she pleased, for, he said, he had sadly needed the comfort of a little love for many a long and dreary month. So Mrs. Drury let matters be as they were, and Nancy clung to her friend's neck, and cried and laughed in turns, though saying but little, until Boris gently detached her arms from about his neck and placed her upon his knee to hear the stirring tale of his adventures and escape and return home.
Boris left the Drurys' house presently with a new conviction looming large and prominent in his inner consciousness, and that was that there was nothing in all the world quite so good as the love of an innocent girl; neither the delights of bear-hunting, nor the glory of successful fight, nor the favour of a great king, nor the applause of his fellows, nor rank in the army, nor wealth, nor the pride of great strength, nor anything else. All these things were good, especially the praise of a beloved master and Tsar; but the clinging arms of this child had revealed a new yet a very old thing to him, and Boris walked towards the barracks of the Preobrajensk Guards on feet that felt not the wooden pavement beneath them, and with his manly heart so full of tenderness towards that other confiding and loving little heart that he almost wished all the world would rise up and menace that one little child, that he might rise also and defend her.
Then Boris went and proved for a third time that he was no ghost, but a solid and able-bodied bear-hunter, and retold once again the story of his adventures for the benefit of an admiring mess. Here Boris learned also from the officers of his regiment that he had narrowly escaped a shot in the back as he stood alone upon the wall of Azof; for a former companion of the Streltsi, one Zaitzoff, had deliberately taken a shot at him, in order, as he had declared, to pay off old scores. Another member of the corps, one Platonof, being wounded to death, and horrified at the dastardliness of the proceeding, had communicated Zaitzoff's words to the surgeon who attended him. The surgeon in his turn reported to the officers of the Preobrajensk, and these took summary vengeance. They had gone in a body to the Streltsi quarters that very evening on hearing the surgeon's tale, had pulled Zaitzoff out of his tent, held an improvised court-martial on the spot, and shot the miscreant then and there, and in the presence of all his comrades, who did nothing to protect him, being themselves horrified with his action.
One more danger escaped, added to the many, was as nothing to this man returned, as it were, from the very gates of death; yet Boris did not fail to offer thanks for the erring flight of Zaitzoff's bullet when he counted up the mercies of God on this first evening of his return, and knelt long and fervently within the cathedral of the Kremlin. Neither did Nancy forget to be grateful when she knelt at her bedside and said her daily prayers, which were the old English ones, in spite of the fact that Colonel Drury and all his house were now within the fold of the Russo-Greek Church and naturalized Russians.
CHAPTER XVII.
OFF TO ENGLAND
Bombardier Peter Alexeyevitch entered with all his impetuosity and marvellous energy into the preparations for the second attack upon Azof. During the whole of the winter and spring he was busy superintending the work of ship-building in the south of Russia. Every little river harbour on either side of the Don had its own improvised ship-building yards, and its hundreds of workmen from all parts of the country, engaged in the setting up as quickly as might be of galleys and rafts and every kind of floating vehicle. "We live, as old Adam did, in the sweat of our brow," wrote the Tsar to one of his intimates in Moscow, "and have hardly time to eat our bread for the pressure of work." Dockyards burned down, and destroying in their own destruction the work of many months; gangs of labourers deserting and disappearing when most required to complete their work—nothing could discourage the great Tsar, or turn him by the fraction of an inch from the path he had laid out for himself. Galleys and boats quickly took shape, and gradually approached completion. Peter was everywhere, swearing, scolding, encouraging, organizing, never weary, and never losing heart because of the misfortunes of the moment. The Don waters rose and carried away many half-completed vessels and much valuable timber; but the forests of Voronej were not so far away nor so poor but that inexhaustible supplies of birch and oak and pine and beech might be had to replace what was lost; and these same waters of the Don which had swept the timber away should be utilized to carry down on their broad bosom as much again and more than they had stolen and cast into the sea. Then Peter himself fell ill; but even sickness could not quell his ardour for the work he had set himself, and the building was not delayed for a moment. At last, when the long nights of midsummer were near at hand, the flotilla was ready and slipped down the broad river straight for the doomed city. There were twenty-two galleys, and one hundred large rafts for carrying ordnance, and some seventeen hundred smaller vessels, boats and lighters.
By this time the regiments from Moscow and the Streltsi, who had never left the neighbourhood, were once more assembled beneath the walls of Azof. The Preobrajensk were there, and among them our friend Boris, who had spent a delightful winter and spring in Moscow, and was now ready and anxious for adventure again. All the troops which had taken part in the former unsuccessful attack upon the fortress were now present again to retrieve their laurels, which had faded before the breath of Turk and Tartar.
But many new faces were to be seen among the old ones—veterans, chiefly, of tanned and foreign appearance; experienced engineers and gunners from France, and Hanover, and Brandenburg. Under the orders of these men a high wall of earth was built beneath the very ramparts of the city, so that the soil, when the wall was finished, trickled over the ramparts of Azof, which it overtopped, and fell into the streets of the city. At the same time the ships and rafts blockaded the town from the water side, so that there was no escape this time by way of the Black Sea. Then, when all was ready for the attack, preparations were made for a combined assault both by land and sea.
But the hearts of the Tartars failed them, and the city capitulated before the storming was commenced, greatly to the disappointment of many young heroes who had intended to perform deeds of valour, and especially of the valiant Boris, whose arms ached for another brush with the Turkish swordsmen, especially with those who had been so unfortunate as to be instructed in the art by himself, with whom he had promised himself much entertainment.
The Tsar spared no pains to discover Boris's friend the pasha, whom, when found, he placed at the service of Boris. The hunter, remembering the palanquin, but recollecting also that he owed to the pasha, in a fashion, his deliverance from death by the sword, was merciful, and did but take his fun out of him for a day or so, after which he released him altogether and let him go free. But for one day that poor pasha afforded much amusement to the officers of the Preobrajensk and to the Tsar also; for Boris harnessed the poor fat manikin to a light hand-cart, and, himself sitting as a coachman in front, drove him up and down the camp, whipping him up with a horse-lash when he tired, till the wretched Turk was ready to fall between the shafts and expire from pure exhaustion.
Jansen, who was captured also in the streets of the city, though disguised in the garb of a common Tartar tradesman, did not escape so easily. He was carried in chains to Moscow when the troops returned to the capital, and there his head was struck off his shoulders and exhibited on a pole as a warning to traitors.
The army entered Moscow in triumph, under festal arches made to represent Hercules trampling Turkish pashas under foot, while Mars, on the summit of a second triumphal archway, pitched Tartars over in large numbers. The principal generals were drawn into the city upon gilded sledges placed on wheels; while Bombardier Peter Alexeyevitch, now raised, however, to the rank of captain, walked in the procession as befitted his humbler grade in the service. Boris was there, too, in all the glory of a major's epaulets; and if he had glanced up at a certain balcony in the Troitski Street as he passed beneath, there is no doubt that he might have seen two bright eyes for which he was the centre of the procession, if not the only figure in it, and which did not fail to notice with pride the new insignia of rank and promotion which he bore on either broad shoulder. There, too, in the midst of the happy marching host, was the wretched prisoner Yakooshka, hooted and spat upon by the crowd as he dragged his heavily-ironed feet over the stones of Moscow.
Thus the first triumph of Peter's new army and navy was achieved with scarcely a single blow struck; for, with the exception of a brilliant assault upon redoubts by the Don Cossacks and an easily-repulsed sortie by the inhabitants, during which but few lives were lost on the Russian side, there had been no fighting done. But the prestige of the foreign troops was won, Peter's policy was justified, the enemies of Christ and of the true faith had been overthrown, a seaport had been gained for Russia, and the beginning of her expansion had become an accomplished fact.
Peter was thoroughly and entirely happy, for he had made the first move in the great game he had come into this world to play, and it was a good move. The Mussulmans had been hustled out of Azof, and a garrison of Streltsi left in the city to take care that they did not return; and now three thousand Russian families were sent to the town, there to abide for ever, they and their descendants. Ship-building was commenced wherever docks could be conveniently erected, and all classes were heavily taxed in order to pay for the ships to be built in them.
Meanwhile, young Russians of talent were despatched to Venice, to the Netherlands, to London, and to Paris, in order to learn the newest things, whether in ship-building, or in gunnery, or in drill and uniform. Their orders were to keep their eyes open and to see and learn everything worth learning.
And now Peter felt that he might conscientiously undertake that trip to foreign lands which he had long promised himself, and to which he had so ardently looked forward. He was to travel incognito, in order to avoid the worry of publicity and the tedious attentions of courts. The journey was to be undertaken under the ægis of a great embassy, Peter following in the train of his ambassadors in the character of a humble attaché or secretary. Boris was to go, as the Tsar had long since promised him; for he would be extremely useful, in England at least, if they ever got so far, by reason of his knowledge of the language. Besides, Peter liked to have his faithful bear-eater, as he still loved to call him, constantly at his side, and would not have thought of leaving him behind under any circumstances.
There was one little heart that was sore indeed when Boris came to take his leave before the departure of the embassy. It was always good-bye, Nancy said wistfully, as the hunter tore himself regretfully from her side: would there never come a time when she would not continually be looking forward with dread to his departure somewhere?
Boris gazed long and earnestly into the sorrowful blue eyes raised to his own. "Perhaps there will, my Nancy, perhaps there will," he said at last, "when you are a little older—God knows; but I must always be a soldier and serve the Tsar wherever he will have me go."
"And I shall always love you and be miserable when you go away," said Nancy, in perfect sincerity.
Nancy had intrusted to Boris many letters and presents to her friends and relations in England, letters in which she had not failed to enlarge upon the greatness and heroism of the bearer; for she had extracted a promise that Boris would deliver with his own hands certain of the packages. There would be frequent couriers backwards and forwards, so that she could write to her friend, and he would write too; so after all Nancy felt there would still be some comfort in life in spite of the envious fate which so constantly took her idol away from her.
Then began that historical journey of Peter and his suite through the Baltic provinces, and Königsberg, and Hanover, and the Netherlands, where Peter left his embassy to follow him at leisure while he hastened on and lived for some weeks at Zaandam as a common Dutch labourer, in order to learn thoroughly the rudiments of ship-building, and to set a good example of industry and self-denial to a lazy and self-indulgent people at home. The details of Peter's life at Zaandam are known to the "youngest schoolboy." I need not therefore dwell upon this hackneyed subject.
Boris had passed with wonder and admiration through the various foreign lands and courts visited by the great Muscovite embassy; but there was far too much eating and drinking and wearing of fine clothes to please him, and he soon began to weary of it and think of home and the simplicity of his life in Moscow, and of hunting expeditions, with Nancy for companion. Especially after the Tsar left the suite and went his own way, Boris found life desperately dull and monotonous. Right glad was he when the embassy reached Amsterdam and the spell of the Tsar's presence was once more upon him. Peter had just been informed that, good as the Dutch ship-builders were, they were very inferior to those of England. This had been quite sufficient for the energetic Tsar, and Boris found that arrangements had already been made for a visit to the latter country.
"So get ready, my bold Bear-eater, for to-morrow we cross the water. You will be sea-sick, of course; but then you will see Nancy's native land—ha, think of that!"
Boris did think of that, and it rejoiced his heart to reflect that his eyes should look upon the country which could produce so wonderful a thing as Nancy Drury.
So, on the following morning, Peter, with Boris and fifteen other Russians, took ship in the private yacht of his Majesty William III., which that monarch had sent for his accommodation, together with three ships of war, the whole under the orders of Admiral Mitchell of the British navy, and crossed the seas for this hospitable land of Britain. The weather being rough, Boris was sea-sick, as foretold by the Tsar; but Peter himself was as happy as a schoolboy out for a holiday, for that sail in his Majesty's beautiful yacht, escorted by such ships of war as he had never yet beheld, was the most delightful thing he had ever experienced. Such being the case, Peter arrived in this country in the highest good-humour, having familiarized himself on the way with the name and use of every single object on board the yacht, as well as with the names, ages, duties, and salaries of every man and boy that went to make up her crew.
Once on shore, the Tsar would hear no talk of palaces and luxury and the idle life of courts, but went with two or three chosen followers and pitched his tent in a country house close to the shipping at Deptford, where he was soon busy among the skippers and sailors, inquiring into and laying to heart everything that he saw which was likely to prove of service to him in his own country. And ever at his right hand, ready for work or for play, though preferring the latter, was Boris the Bear-Hunter, whose prowess in all athletic matters Peter was never weary of showing off to his English friends.
