Eyes Like the Sea — 16 - Chapter 13, part 2
"We were about five hundred paces from the terrible beasts.
"They immediately perceived us, and, leaving the carcase, forthwith began scudding towards us, spurring each other on with their nasty short sharp yelps.
"'Alas, alas!
It is all up with us now!'
wailed the contra-bass.
'The wolves will eat us up.'
"Even in that hour of mortal peril the clarinetist was true to his gipsy humour.
'Then we shall have a very queer shape at the resurrection,' said he.
"I bade them leave off wailing, and hasten to clamber up into a willow-tree, whither the monsters could not follow us.
"It was an old pollard willow, the branches of which were cut off every year, so that only the crown of it remained, surrounded by young shoots.
I, who had never learnt the art of tree-climbing, was hoisted up by the gipsies first of all, and then they hastily scrambled up after me.
"When we had got to the top of the tree we discovered that in the middle of it was a large hole--the whole inside of the tree was hollow, and could contain a man.
"'Leader,' said the contra-bass, 'your loss would be most serious, creep down into that hole.'
I took him at his word, and glided down from the crown of the tree into the deep hollow trunk.
First of all, however, I tied my long cotton neckerchief to a little branch, that I might be able to hoist myself up again in case of need, for the hole in the willow went right down to its very roots.
At the side of the tree, too, close to an old branch, there was an orifice as large as one's fist, through which one could look as through an attic window.
"The five wolves were not long in arriving.
"They did not come quite near at first, but reconnoitred.
Whenever one of them sneaked up a little nearer, the clarinet-player aimed at it with his instrument, which the wolf took for a musket.
Then the beast would back a little and scratch up the snow with his hind legs.
They say the creature is wont to do this when he sees a man stand on the defensive;
he tries to blind him with snow.
"When, however, the wolves at last discovered that we had no fire-arms, they sent up the ugliest howls, and began the siege of the willow.
They took tremendous leaps in the air to reach the crown of the tree, but it was too high for them.
"Then it occurred to the gipsies that they had often heard that wolves had a strong penchant for music, and they began giving them a clarinet and fiddle concert.
"It is true that the nasty brutes left off the siege, sat round the willow, and began to howl in concert with the music, at the same time raising their horrid jaws towards the moon, and lashing their sides with their ragged brush-like tails; and for a short time I was quite amused at the scene.
But suddenly our double danger occurred to my mind.
"'Hey!
gipsies.
Stop, I say!
Is the devil in you?
Your music will bring the pickets of the Croats upon us, and they will flay us alive.'
"At this they stopped their music.
"This appeared to make the wolves still more savage, and now they tried a fresh stratagem.
"They had found out that the willow leaned a little to one side, and rushing at it from a little distance, they attempted to scale the sloping side of the tree.
This manoeuvre was likely to have succeeded.
It was then that I saw what a powerful beast the wolf really is, and how much more cunning than any species of dog.
Scrambling up at full tilt, they managed to reach the crown of the willow, but there the brave contra-bass was awaiting them, and gave them such a kick on the snout with his iron-heeled boots that the attacking beasts fell head over heels backwards.
"This they repeated ten or twelve times.
"And there was this remarkable circumstance about it, that every time an attacking wolf was prostrated by a kick from the gipsy, the others rushed upon him as he fell, and worried him as if to punish him for his failure.
"Suddenly they left off, and went and sat down in a heap just in front of my window.
Their tongues lolled out of their panting mouths; their hot, bestial breath rose into the cold air before me.
They appeared to be taking counsel together.
The biggest of them seemed to be their leader.
If one of the younger ones yelped too much, he would snap at his neck as if to say 'shut up!'
"At last they appeared to have hatched their stratagem.
The whole lot of them got up and shuffled farther off, squinting over their shoulders all the time towards the willow-tree.
"My gipsies fancied they were saved.
"'You shall have no roast gipsy this time!'
bawled the clarinet-player after them derisively from his sure stronghold, as he fancied it.
"All at once the wolves returned and stormed onwards like race-horses, each one being about a wolf's tail ahead of the other.
"The first of them rushed straight up the tree, and while the contra-bass was kicking him in the head, the second wolf leaped across the first wolf's back and seized the man's leg.
"I heard a despairing shriek: "'Don't let me go, comrade!'
"The second musician tried to free his down-falling friend from the jaws of the wild beast, and in doing so lost his balance, and the pair of them fell down from the tree.
"What happened after that is more than I can tell you.
It is enough that I should have had to live through that mortal struggle of the two luckless victims with those filthy brutes.
How many times have I not dreamt it all over again!
I believe that even if I had committed all the seven deadly sins, I should have more than expiated them all in that awful hour.
I hid my face in the crumbling rottenness of the hollow tree, that I might hear and see nothing.
It seemed an eternity to me while the bestial howling lasted which the wolves made as they shared together their accursed banquet in my very presence.
"I dared not stir, lest they might find out that I also was there.
Great Heaven!
What horrors I had to endure!
"Suddenly a sort of growling and snarling began close beside me.
The old wolf was running sniffing round the hollow tree.
He had discovered that there was still booty inside it.
"He began to scrape the earth at the root of the tree.
He evidently meant to dig a hole beneath the tree through which he might get at me.
Fortunately for me, it was not sandy soil, but stony, hard-frozen turf.
He could not succeed that way.
"Then he caught sight of the hole in the side of the tree.
At one time, perhaps, a branch had been sawed off at this spot, and the bark had rotted away.
The wolf began to enlarge this opening, tore it with his claws, and gnawed and worried the rotten wood with his grinders.
He had soon so far enlarged the hole as to be able to stick his head into it.
I
saw the green glare of his fiery eyes; I felt his stinking breath; I heard the gnashing of his teeth.
Then despair made me foolhardy.
I drew my crooked knife out of the leg of my boot, with the other hand I seized the wolf by the ear, and cut it off at a single twirl.
"At this the beast, with a furious howl, drew back his head from the hole, and began to howl and run away like a whipped cur.
The others followed after him.
With the wolf's ear remaining in my hand as a trophy, I sank back against the hollow trunk; I could not sink right down, because the hollow space was too narrow."
I felt a cold shudder run all over me at this ghastly narrative.
Bessy herself was quite exhausted.
"Alas!
I am quite worn out.
I tremble at the very thought of it.
You are the second person to whom I have told it.
But how pale you are all at once!"
I suppose I _had_ turned very pallid.
It had suddenly flashed through my brain that just at that very time my wife was on her journey through an uninhabited valley, and the foresters told me that wolves strayed about there.
Bessy sighed deeply, raised her drooping head, and then continued her story:-- "Thus I had freed myself from the wolves; but I was not left very long in the belief that shame at my depriving their leader of one of his ears was the cause of it.
No!
Wolves are not so shamefaced as all that.
A
troop of horsemen was approaching from behind the sand-hills.
There were six men on horseback and one man on assback.
"One terror had been supplanted by another.
"Peering through the hole in the tree, I recognised the uniforms of the horsemen by the light of the moon--they were Jellachich's hussars.
And that there might be no doubt about their coming after us, I recognised as they came near the face of the ass-rider.
It was my bass-viol player, whom I had left behind me.
"It was very easy to see what had happened.
The gipsy, to save his own skin, or, perhaps, at the flogging-post itself, had confessed that the band had come from Comorn, and was hired by me to go as far as Debreczin.
Hence it was not very difficult to conclude that I was only a false gipsy, who was carrying despatches from the beleaguered fortress to the Hungarian Government.
"The horsemen had brought the gipsy with them that he might put them on my track.
Once discovered, and I was lost.
"On the snow field, lit up by the moonlight, the scene of the hideous struggle was plain to the newcomers.
The long lines of blood, fragments of torn garments, a foot sticking out of a boot in the snow--Ugh!
May I never see such a sight again!
"The horsemen galloped quickly up over the crackling snow.
"The violoncellist had to dismount from his ass.
"The good creature howled and groaned from the bottom of his throat, bewailing his comrades in the gipsy tongue, and cursing the monsters who had devoured them.
"The leader of the patrol was a sergeant.
He ordered the gipsy about in Croatian, and the gipsy has the peculiar virtue of understanding what is said to him in a language of which he is perfectly ignorant.
He replied in Hungarian.
"'Oh, woe, woe!
Those accursed wolves have devoured our leader!
There's his boot!
They've only left his boot.
I recognise it well.
He bought it only last week at Czegled.
He gave six florins for it.
A brand-new boot!
And this is his foot.'
"It was plain to me that the gipsy had guessed that I was hidden somewhere, and there was enough of the gipsy in him, even amidst the greatest horrors, to induce him to make fools of my pursuers.
He betrayed me first of all because he couldn't help it; he saved me finally because he _could_.
He knew very well that I had given my new boots to the contra-bass.
My boots were of Russian leather.
"'Look there!'
cried the sergeant, and he pointed with his finger.
'_Jeden, dwa!
Jak sza tri?
_'[81] [Footnote 81: Croatian--"One, two!
Where's the third?"
] "The gipsy swore by all that was holy that that was the third.
"'Then where's the first?'
"'That's the first, of course!'
"There was no dinning into his head the arithmetical truism that if you take two from three one remains.
"The sergeant thereupon ordered one of the hussars to dismount from his horse, at the same time pointing at the willow-tree with his sword, whence I concluded that he was about to examine the tree to see if anybody was hidden in its hollow trunk.
"I now veritably believed that the time had come for me to turn my crooked knife against my own throat.
"All at once a crackle of musketry resounded from the brushwood, and a company of guerilla horse dashed out, crying, 'Forward, Magyars!'
The Jellachich hussars didn't see the joke of this at all, hastily turned their horses' heads and galloped off in the direction of the town.
The violoncellist also mounted his long-eared beast, and ambled gently off in a third direction midway between the two belligerents.
He had no desire to take any part in the struggle.
"The guerillas, who were numerous, sent a few volleys after the enemy, but from such a distance that the bullets couldn't possibly hit the fugitives, and then returned in triumph.
Then I, hearing them speak Hungarian, quickly hoisted myself up out of the hole into the top of the tree, and began so far as my hoarse voice would allow me, to give them indications of my existence.
"The gallant warriors immediately hastened to the willow-tree and helped me down from my dangerous perch.
Their leader, a handsome, chivalrous-looking young man, with a true Hungarian face, began to cross-question me, and asked me whence I came and whither I was going.
Perceiving that I was among Hungarian soldiers, I frankly told them that I had come from Comorn, and had been sent to Debreczin with despatches for the Hungarian Government.
"The guerilla captain was a suspicious man.
"'Oho!
I daresay!
That's easily said, but difficult to believe.
What!
confide such a mission to a gipsy!
A likely tale!'
"I told him that I was no gipsy, though my face was painted so, but that I lived at Comorn and belonged to the place.
"'Then, if you are an inhabitant, tell me if you know one Maurus Jókai there--and what you know of him?'
"I was very pleased to answer such a question.
'I know him very well,' I said, 'and I can tell you this much about him, that he went to the High School at Kecskemet, where he completed his legal studies--or rather learnt how to paint in oils from a worthy comrade of his there.'
"Without more ado he clapped his hand in mine: 'That worthy comrade of his was no other than myself.'
"So you see," she said, turning towards me, "you were of assistance to me, even here."
"Wasn't that old schoolfellow of mine called Jansci?"
I asked.
"Yes, that's what they called him.
With him was another young man, with quite a girlish face, and him they called Józsi; he inquired about you most particularly.
When you gave your artistic representations at Kecskemet, he used to play the girl's parts."
"Quite true," I said, "so it was."
"So you see I must have been there or I should have known nothing about these things.
The guerillas told me all about it as they took me with them.
They were very attentive.
One of them gave me his mantle, another let me mount his nag, and so they took me to the 'Szikra' inn, where they made me drink punch with them, regaled me with veal, and then made me a bed on the straw with their mantles that I might sleep off my exhaustion.
The Jellachich hussars gave us no trouble.
They could not come back till morning, when the whole regiment would doubtless turn out to capture the guerillas, who would, by that time, be on the other side of the Theiss.
The sledges were all ready to start, and would scour back across the frozen river at the first signal to Czibakhaza, where were the foreposts of the Hungarian army under Damjanich.
"But for a long time I could not sleep.
Constantly before my eyes flitted the horrible death-struggle between the two unhappy men and the wild beasts, and amidst the howling and shrieking resounded the gay song of the guerillas: 'The hut's ablaze, the rush-roof crackles, Press thy brown maid to thy breast!'
In my dream this tune was mingled with the howling of the wolves, and at one moment the wolves were singing, 'The hut's ablaze,' and at another the Croats were howling at the gipsies sitting on the branch.
Towards morning I was awakened by two cannon-shots.
I rejoiced to be delivered from my spectres.
The lieutenant of the guerillas hurried me into the sledge, as a regiment of hostile horse was approaching from Kecskemet.
"It took us ten minutes to dash across the frozen Theiss.
On the opposite bank the foreposts of the Honveds were encamping.
The business of the guerillas was to harass the enemy, capture their forage waggons, and then bring word of their movements to the main army.
"They took me straight to General Damjanich.
[82] [Footnote 82: Made Commander-in-chief of the 3rd Hungarian Army Corps in consequence of his brilliant exploits at Alibunar and Lagerdorf; he annihilated Karger's brigade at the great battle of Szolnok, and was elected to represent that town in the Hungarian Diet.
After fresh exploits he was made War Minister, and, after the war, was court-marshalled at Arad by the Austrians and shot.
He had not the military genius of Görgey perhaps, but as a general of division was admirable.
--TR.
] "I was now no longer obliged to keep my despatch hidden, so I split up my fiddle, took out of it the documents that were gummed to it, and their production was my best credentials.
"The approving, smiling glance of the powerful, heroic-looking General I shall never forget.
At the sight of him I quite forgot that I was personating a man, and would have liked to have fallen down before him and kissed his hand.
Indeed, I was so agitated that I could not utter a word.
"The General filled a little glass full of _szilvorium_.
[83] 'Drink, my son!'
said he, 'it will loosen your throat.'
[Footnote 83: A spirit made from plums.
] "My throat was hoarse; I had a voice as deep as a man's. I told him I had come from Comorn, and I was sent to Lazar Mészáros, the War Minister.
"'You will seek old Kóficz[84] in vain at Debreczin, my son, he commands there no more.
So you Comorn folks don't know what's going on outside, eh?
Another is at the head of the War Department now.
I will give you a letter of introduction to him.'
[Footnote 84: This Hungarian War Minister had said in one of his reports that the motions of the Opposition in the Diet would turn to nothing but _Kóficz_ (_i.
e. _, water-gruel).
The name stuck to him ever after.
--JÓKAI.
] "Then he sat down and wrote me a couple of lines to a General with a German name, which is expressed in Hungarian by the word _Bacsi_.
[85] [Footnote 85: Cousin.
--Vetter was the General in question.
] "He said, while he was writing this letter, that this General with a German name was the life and soul of our military organization.
"Then, by the General's command, I received a nice clean Honved uniform (I had to retain my brown countenance for some time longer), and besides that I had an open passport enjoining upon all to give me every facility to reach Debreczin as quickly as possible.
"On the evening of the following day I arrived at Debreczin, and on descending from my sledge, proceeded at once to the General's. He was a mild, soft-featured gentleman, with a close-clipped beard and moustache.
He didn't even wear a General's uniform.
Nobody would have guessed his rank from the look of him.
After reading through my letter of introduction, he looked me straight and sharply in the face.
"'You are Captain Tihamér Rengetegi, eh?'
"If I had only been intent on my own interest, I might have told him quite frankly that I had no right either to the name or the uniform of a soldier; but how could I betray my faithful consort who was smuggled away in the hovel at Hetény?
"'Yes, General, I am.'
"'Who made you captain?'
"'The War Minister.'
"'For deeds of valour?'
"'During the siege of Vienna I twice carried despatches through the besieging camp from the Hungarian Government to General Bem.'
" Here I intervened: "That is not true; I know very well through whom the Hungarian Government got those despatches."
"Anyhow, my friend boasted of it as his own deed," said Bessy; after which she resumed her narration.
"'Good!'
said the General; 'now give me the despatch.'
"The information was written in a secret cipher.
"'I must decipher this first.
There will be a meeting to-night of the Committee of National Defence.
Early to-morrow morning you will appear before me.
Now go to the "White Horse."
Speak to nobody.
Keep your room!'
"Nevertheless, an hour afterwards he sent for me.
"He led me into his inner room, for he allowed himself the luxury of a double-roomed apartment at Debreczin.
Two other ministers, Paul Nyáry and Joseph Patay, were not so fortunate.
They had to be content with a double room between them.
"The General was now very gentle with me.
He made me sit down at table, and poured me out some tea.
He offered me a cigar too, and although I ought not to have done so, I lighted it.
It nipped my tongue a good deal, but I had to show them that I was a man.
"Then he made me tell them how I had got out of the fortress, and how I had forced my way through the hostile camp.
My relation made a great impression.
When I was dismissed, they pressed my hand and assured me that my good and boldly executed service should be rewarded.
They further commanded me to come to them early the next day.
"I appeared next day at his headquarters in full parade, and they admitted me before any one else.
