Читать книгу The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" or, Life and Adventures in the Orient - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 88

In a discussion between Capital and Labor the former generally has the best of it, and the result of our discussion proved no exception to the rule. Labor was compelled to accept our terms and receive its pay when the work was done, but it required a good half-hour to bring Labor to terms. We were entrusted to the care of a good natured but rather stupid driver, and to three horses harnessed abreast and full of energy. We trotted out of the ruin-lined streets, and soon left out of sight the most famous city of southern Russia.

The day was beautiful—a sort of a hazy Indian-summer sky—and if we had ordered the weather to suit us it could not have been more delightful. We drove through the field of Balaklava. How few there are now living of those who made Balaklava famous?

We made a brief halt at the edge of the plain where the immortal Light Brigade rode to glory and the grave, and pressed unflinchingly forward as the pitiless iron from Russian batteries tore through their ranks, and covered the ground with dead and dying heroes. One of our party recited Tennyson’s well-known poem on this event, and I think we all felt, down to the depths of our hearts, the full force of the closing lines:

“Honor the brave and bold;

Long shall the tale be told,

Yea, when our babes are old,

How they rode onward.

When can their glory fade?

O! the wild charge they made,

Honor the Light Brigade,

Noble Six Hundred!”

We visited the little village of Balaklava, and in a Russian rowboat paddled in the miniature land-locked harbor and out to its entrance, where we danced on the waves that rolled inward from the sea. Then we drove to Baidar, a miserable village, where we supped on tea, eggs, and bread, and breakfasted on eggs, bread, and tea—nothing else—and slept on beds of the most impromptu character. I covered myself with my overcoat and travelling shawl, the Judge solaced himself with a table-cloth and a fish-net, while the “Doubter” was kept warm by a late copy of the London Times in addition to his overcoat. It was a rough night, and we were off early in the morning, as, indeed, anybody would be with such accommodations. If you want to get a man up in good season, put him to sleep on a pile of rocks, or a bed that dates from the Silurian period, with the chief qualities of roughness and solidity.

The “Doubter” averred his belief that there was not so bad a hotel in all Russia as the one he occupied in Baidar; and ever afterwards when we wished to get him into a regular cast-iron passion we had only to refer to his night’s lodging in the interior of the Crimea. And I really think that he was unfairly treated, as the Judge afterward made confession of having taken away the full sheet of the Times soon after they retired, thus leaving the “Doubter” nothing but “the supplement.”