James Grant

“ Now, Ellinor, darling, we shall elope in earnest, and we shall not be the first couple who have done so, and lived happy ever after, like couples in the old story books.'
'Don't be alarmed—don't fear, Miss Ellinor,' said Dewsnap, thinking it necessary to say something, as she turned her haggard eyes on him, and ignored the presence of Sleath.
'Don't fear!' says a writer. 'How often in this world of terror and trouble has that phrase been spoken, and how often will it yet be spoken—in vain.'
'Oh, sir, will you, in mercy, if you are a man, set me on shore?' she implored again. ”

“ A little time ago it would have been torture for Ellinor to look upon scenes so associated with Robert Wodrow, the lover she had wronged and lost and mourned for; and it was painful still to do so, though her heart throbbed with hope and joy, as he was returning to her with the rank and position he had predicted to his mother.
So Robert Wodrow will win the one woman of his heart! Hand and hand they will go forward together into that new existence—that new world of tame, married life, as it is deemed; but to them, a world of trust and love it will be ”

“ He saw that she seemed, somehow, utterly helpless—a mysterious waif, cast upon the waters; he saw that she trembled under the unpleasant gaze of Dewsnap, and simply loathed Sleath, who sought to make himself the arbiter of her destiny; so Mr. Rufane Ringbolt thought why should he not enter stakes for this prize? Why should not he try to make his innings when others failed?
She had been picked up like a derelict craft, and by himself, too; and then Hamburg—dissipated Hamburg—filled with people of many races and creeds—was just the place where people may play the wildest pranks with ease. ”

“ Mary's Terrace; 'and in turn, Ellinor, you will learn that a faithful old lover is not to be despised.'
'I have already learned that,' said Ellinor, her tears beginning to fall hotly as she thought of Robert Wodrow.
'I am glad to hear you say so,' said Sleath, thinking of himself, 'and to find that after all you cannot forget a man who has once loved you—and loves you so fondly still, in spite of the coldness you manifest and the obliquy you heap upon him. How grand it is to forgive!' he continued, attempting to take her hand. ”

“ Oh, why did men become soldiers?
'Alone—alone in the world now!' wailed Mary.
'My darling, you have me and my little girls to love you as sisters,' said Mrs. Deroubigne, folding the deathly-pale girl again and again to her motherly breast; but, passionate though her sympathy and regard, Mary shivered, and thought who could ever replace Ellinor as a sister, and felt, as she said, most fearfully alone. ”

“ IN HAMBURG STILL.
Ellinor was altogether unlike any other girl on whom the evil eyes of Herr Wyburg had rested, in Hamburg at least. Her face was so clearly cut, with pride in its contour, a dreamy thought its eyes, and something almost angelic in its purity—as Tennyson has it,
'A sight to make an old man young.'
The three days' unexpected absence of Sir Redmond rather alarmed Herr Wyburg. ”

“ Her miserable plight and imminent peril had been seen from the deck by that personage, who at once had a boat lowered from his craft, which lay at anchor in the Elbe. He had saved her, and in a spirit of mischief—or not knowing what else to do with her—had brought her on board the yacht of his employer, Mr. Adolphus Dewsnap, whose present companion and bosom-friend was Sir Redmond Sleath, whose first emotions of perplexity and evil on Ringbolt bringing off a lady changed to those of blank astonishment and high triumph on recognising in the half-drowned girl—Ellinor Wellwood! ”

“ Oh, this is intolerable!' exclaimed Ellinor, covering her face with her hands. 'It is useless to remind a man like you of his marriage.'
Sleath's eyes gleamed dangerously. He and Ellinor were alone in the saloon, as Dewsnap and the sailing-master were smoking on deck, and the companion-way was kept bolted to prevent any attempt at escape.
'What did I know of life, of the world, or of human nature when I met that artful woman with the absurd name, Fubsby, and took vows—if vows they were—for a life-time. Married! ”

“ It was at this crisis in their fate that Daud Shah, a fine old Afghan sirdir, came riding from the Ameer's palace, through the crowds of people, and called upon them 'to desist from their infamous crime!'
He was a man above fifty years of age, with a stern face of a decidedly Jewish type, an aquiline nose, and high cheekbones, dark and restless eyes, having beetling brows tufted with grizzly hair, and a long grey beard that descended to his shawl-girdle.
But his appearance only added to the rancorous fury of the people and the mutineers. ”

“ But Colville was too quick for them. In leaping over he had relinquished the rifle he had been using for his sword, and with the latter, after baffling an attempt they made to muffle or bundle him up in the rug, while they were staggering beneath his weight, he waved them back just as they rushed upon him with their sharp charahs, and such blind hate and fury that they all wounded each other. ”

“ Resolutely had Leslie Colville defended the summit of the somewhat isolated tower on which he had taken post with only four chosen marksmen, intending to enfilade the front attack on the Residency, and pick off the best shots in possession of the lofty arsenal roof; but he had soon the mortification to see each of his men perish in quick succession, and to find the tower in flames beneath him, cutting off his descent, and leaving him helplessly exposed to a fire from those who must soon have smitten him down but for the frantic fury with which they impeded each other's aim and operations ”

“ Ellinor was so painfully agitated that Sir Redmond was fain to resort to the most specious falsehoods to soothe and calm her; he promised most solemnly to write or telegraph to the British Ambassador at Brussels, to the postal authorities there, and so forth; and, with intense anger and mortification in his heart at his bad success, he left her to rejoin Dewsnap, and have a 'deep drink' at the Hotel Russie, and perhaps a turn into the Schweitzer Pavilion, feeling inclined on one hand—all inflamed as he was with her beauty and helplessness—to force her in some way to love him ”

“ The lamp still burned in the binnacle, and the wetted garments and bronzed visage of Ringbolt shone in its wavering gleam as he grasped the spokes of the wheel, planted his feet firmly on the deck grating, and looked from time to time aloft, though he could discern nothing.
Day began to dawn, but the gale still continued. The cutter was in the Elbe mouth, though no land was in sight; but Ringbolt knew that the two sandbanks between what is called the Southern and Northern Elbe lay ahead, but northward of Merwark Island ”

“ Robert Wodrow was in the act of getting his carbine unstrapped from his dead horse when a mounted man suddenly came upon him clad in a sorely frayed and tattered blue patrol jacket, and wearing on his head a scarlet Afghan loonghee, and great was his astonishment and noisy and genuine his joy on discovering that this solitary and unarmed rider was Leslie Colville, whom he had long since numbered with the slain among the ashes of the Residency. ”

“ The heights there are precipitous, a thousand feet above the valley of Cabul, and there the dark figures of the Afghans, with their arms glittering in the sunshine, could be seen, clustering thick as a swarm of bees against the grey granite of the cliffs, up the eastern flank of which our infantry, with the Highlanders as usual in the van, were now creeping with some light mountain guns. ”

“ But he had a wholesome fear of Sleath, for, notwithstanding all his wealth, the latter had obtained somehow a great ascendency over him.
'She knows too much about one now,' muttered Sleath to himself. 'The marriage dodge and the ailing uncle won't do again—so how to deceive her?'
'"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men are deceivers ever."
so says Shakespeare,' said Dewsnap, tipsily rolling his head from side to side; 'and he was right; devilish few of us are worth sighing for, I think.'
'Dolly Dewsnap turned moralist!' exclaimed Sleath, with a scornful laugh. ”

“ He only smiled grimly, and touched the carved silver hilt of the charah in his crimson shawl girdle.
'You treat them with a spirit of selfishness,' said Colville; 'but I know that even Christian men do the same, by making more severe laws for women than themselves, forgetting that by so doing they raise them above themselves.'
But the sirdir knew not what to make of this idea, and so remained silent. ”

“ The cruel and barbarous murder of the young and gallant Hector Maclain, after he had been so many weeks the prisoner and guest of Ayoub Khan, proved that our Afghan enemies could be true or false to their salt, exactly as suited their caprice or cruelty; thus, though Leslie Colville was in precisely the same position in the Cabul fort, it by no means followed that his life might not be taken in any moment of fear or hatred.
Life in India has often been described as one long and listless yawn, born of weariness, heat, and indolence ”

“ You have something to live for. What have I?'
Untwisting a couple of cartridges into a saucer, he made a species of black paste therewith, and, blackening his face before a mirror, contrived still further to disguise himself with some Afghan clothing that was found in the Residency—a brown camise with loose wide sleeves, a furred choga or mantle, a loonghee, and armed with a tulwar and shield, like a budmash. ”

“ When a puff of wind blew the latter aside for a moment a cry escaped Robert Wodrow, for Colville had vanished, and in a few minutes after, the tower fell thundering down in a mass of blazing ruins.
The assailants had now discovered that loftier buildings, as stated, commanded the flat roof of the Residency, the upper storey of which was open on every side, being merely a sleeping place during the hot months of the year, and consisting of a roof, wattled and plastered, resting on slender pillars of wood, painted and gaily gilded. ”

“ The past day had been dull and hazy, and the half-gale now subsided almost entirely, but then the cutter rolled heavily, adding to the misery of the unfortunate Ellinor. Then the wind, blowing from the level coast, would recover its strength, and, changing its direction, become furious, while a heavy swell came on, and when dawn stole in the Flying Foam, still close-hauled on the port tack, was standing over towards Cuxhaven, the shore of which is so low that the only objects seen against the sky were the flagstaff of a battery and the guns of the latter mounted en barbette. ”

“ They all heard her; but Lord Dunkeld looked steadily askance, showing only the facial angle which he thought so like that of the Grande Monarque, while the two ladies gazed with wonder at first, and then with frigid hauteur; and Blanche, who, we have said, was strong in love, ambition, and hate, said something to the coachman, who drove away at once, while the usually imperturbable Gaiters, in some alarm, took the droski in an opposite direction, and Ellinor sank back despairing on her seat, as she was conveyed at a galloping pace back to the gloomy house overlooking the Bleichen Fleet. ”

“ Close and terrible was the fire poured by the Guides with their carbines and by the few European officers into the dense masses of the foe beneath, and deadly that fire proved—the front files, if they could be termed so, melted away or fell over each other in heaps, but fresh men pushed forward from the rear and took their places, serving only to feed the harvest of death gathered at the hands of those who fought not for existence—the hope of that was quite lost now—but for vengeance. ”

“ A clasp for Charasiah was ordered to be worn with the war medal, but ere he saw Ellinor, Robert Wodrow had yet to win the bronze star awarded to all who shared in Roberts's famous march to Candahar.
'After all the peril faced and glory won, are we to give up Candahar—after all?' was the ever-recurring question among the soldiers of our army, as they marched back to India, and felt that, though Roberts had restored our prestige, all the honour gained in battle would be lost if we failed to retain Candahar. ”

“ Ever and anon they paused to gather breath, though they panted rather than breathed, and their eyes glared into each other, as the rage of conflict and lust of destruction grew in their hearts—Wodrow the while feeling that every moment was to him most precious, as he knew not what succour or comrades his foe might have at hand. ”

“ Weary, breathless, and suffering from an intense thirst, incident to hot exertion and fierce excitement—a thirst they had neither the means nor the time to allay—their eyes bloodshot, their lips baked, their undressed wounds in many instances streaming with blood, their faces pale as death—the death that was so soon to overtake them all—the handful of Europeans and Guide soldiers maintained the unequal conflict with a heroism that mingled with despair. ”

“ From the square keep of Mahmoud Shah's fort he could see mounted scouts and regular cavalry patrols hourly scouring the road, while crowds of Ghilzies and other hillmen, with banners waving and arms glittering, hovered on the mountain sides; caravans of camels laden with stores from Ghuznee, Bamian, Parwan, and elsewhere in the rear passed daily into the gates of Cabul, and more than one train of cannon too. ”