Late that afternoon we came through more salty flats to a long coastline of rollers sweeping in from a sea so blue that I found myself muttering through my beard “Thalassa or thalatta, the former or the latter?,” it seemed so much like the ocean that old Arnold’s Greeks had seen after their great march. And suddenly I could close my eyes and hear his voice droning away on a summer afternoon at Rugby, and smell the cut grass coming in through the open windows, and hear the fags at cricket outside, and from that I found myself dreaming of the smell of hay in the fields beyond Renfrew, and Elspeth’s body warm and yielding, and the birds calling at dusk along the river, and the pony champing at the grass, and it was such a sweet, torturing longing that I groaned aloud, and when I opened my eyes the tears came, and there was a hideous Russian voice clacking “Aralskoe More!”,b and bright Asian sunlight, and the chains galling my wrist and ankle-bones, and foreign flat faces all round, and I realized that my earlier thoughts of home had been an illusion, and this was alien, frightening land.
There was a big military camp on the shore, and a handy little steamer lying off, and while the rest of us waited Ignatieff was received with honours by a group of senior officers – and he only a captain, too. Of course, I’d realized before this that he was a big noise, but the way they danced attendance on him you’d have thought he was the Tsar’s cousin. (Maybe he was, for all I know.)
They put us aboard the steamer that evening, and I was so tuckered out by the journey that I just slept where I lay down. And in the morning there was a coast ahead, with a great new wooden pier, and a huge river flowing down between low banks to the sea. As far as I could see the coast was covered with tents, and there was another steamer, and half a dozen big wooden transports, and one great warship, all riding at anchor between the pier and the river mouth. There were bugles sounding on the distant shore, and swarms of people everywhere, among the tents, on the pier, and on the ships, and a great hum of noise in the midst of which a military band was playing a rousing march; this is the army, I thought, or most of it, this is their Afghan expedition.
I asked one of the Russian sailors what the river might be, and he said: “Syr Daria” and then pointing to a great wooden stockaded fort on the rising land above the river, he added: “Fort Raim.”35 And then one of the Cossacks pushed him away, cursing, and told me to hold my tongue.
They landed us in lighters, and there was another delegation of smart uniforms to greet Ignatieff, and an orderly holding a horse for him, and all around tremendous bustle of unloading and ferrying from the ships, and gangs of orientals at work, with Russian non-coms bawling at them and swinging whips, and gear being stowed in the newly-built wooden sheds along the shore. I watched gun limbers being swung down from a derrick, and cursing, half-naked gangs hauling them away; the whole pier was piled with crates and bundles, and for all the world it looked like the levee at New Orleans, except that this was a temporary town of huts and tents and lean-to’s. But there were just as many people, sweating and working in orderly chaos, and you could feel the excitement in the air.
Ignatieff came trotting down to where I was sitting between my Cossacks, and at a word they hauled me up and we set off at his heels through the confusion, up the long, gradual slope to the fort. It was farther off than I’d expected, about a mile, so that it stood well back from the camp, which was all spread out like a sand-table down the shore-line. As we neared the fort he stopped, and his orderly was pointing at the distant picket lines and identifying the various regiments – New Russian Dragoons, Romiantzoff’s Grenadiers, Astrakhan Carabiniers, and Aral Hussars, I remember. Ignatieff saw me surveying the camp, and came over. He hadn’t spoken to me since we left Arabat.
“You may look,” says he, in that chilling murmur of his, “and reflect on what you see. The next Englishman to catch sight of them will be your sentry on the walls of Peshawar. And while you are observing, look yonder also, and see the fate of all who oppose the majesty of the Tsar.”
I looked where he pointed, up the hill towards the fort, and my stomach turned over. To one side of the gateway was a series of wooden gallows, and from each one hung a human figure – although some of them were hard to recognize as human. A few hung by their arms, some by their ankles, one or two lucky ones by their necks. Some were wasted and blackened by exposure; at least one was still alive and stirring feebly. An awful carrion reek drifted down on the clear spring air.
“Unteachables,” says Ignatieff. “Bandit scum and rebels of the Syr Daria who have been unreceptive to our sacred Russian imperial mission. Perhaps, when we have lined their river with sufficient of these examples, they will learn. It is the only way to impress recalcitrants. Do you not agree?”
He wheeled his horse, and we trailed up after him towards the fort. It was bigger, far bigger, than I’d expected, a good two hundred yards square, with timber ramparts twenty feet high, and at one end they were already replacing the timber with rough stone. The Russian eagle ensign was fluttering over the roofed gatehouse, there were grenadiers drawn up and saluting as Ignatieff cantered through, and I trudged in, clanking, to find myself on a vast parade, with good wooden barracks around the walls, troops drilling in the dusty square, and a row of two-storey administrative buildings down one side. It was a very proper fort, something like those of the American frontier in the ’seventies; there were even some small cottages which I guessed were officers’ quarters.
Ignatieff was getting his usual welcome from a tubby chap who appeared to be the commandant; I wasn’t interested in what they said, but I gathered the commandant was greatly excited, and was babbling some great news.
“Not both of them?” I heard Ignatieff say, and the other clapped his hands in great glee and said, yes, both, a fine treat for General Perovski and General Khruleff when they arrived.
“They will make a pretty pair of gallows, then,” says Ignatieff. “You are to be congratulated, sir. Nothing could be a better omen for our march through Syr Daria.”
“Ah, ha, excellent!” cries the tubby chap, rubbing his hands. “And that will not be long, eh? All is in train here, as you see, and the equipment arrives daily. But come, my dear Count, and refresh yourself.”
They went off, leaving me feeling sick and hang-dog between my guards; the sight of those tortured bodies outside the stockade had brought back to me the full horror of my own situation. And I felt no better when there came presently a big, brute-faced sergeant of grenadiers, a coiled nagaika in his fist, to tell my Cossacks they could fall out, as he was taking me under his wing.
“Our necks depend on this fellow,” says one of the Cossacks doubtfully, and the sergeant sneered, and scowled at me.
“My neck depends on what I’ve got in the cells already,” growls he. “This offal is no more precious than my two birds. Be at peace; he shall join them in my most salubrious cell, from which even the lizards cannot escape. March him along!”
They escorted me to a corner on the landward side of the fort, down an alley between the wooden buildings, and to a short flight of stone steps leading down to an iron-shod door. The sergeant hauled back the massive bolts,