The Shadow of the Czar Part 14

Suddenly the light vanished.

A very simple occurrence, and yet Paul had no sooner noted it than there came over him a trembling and a horror as great as if the extinction of that light had likewise involved the extinction of Barbara.

His mind was either playing him strange tricks, or else his hearing had become more than ordinarily acute. Sounds on the opposite coast seemed close at hand,--sounds of an eerie character.

The deep silence of the night was first broken by the fitful ringing of church bells; immediately afterwards came a series of reverberations which Paul could compare only with the rattling echoes produced by the discharge of artillery among lofty hills; and next there floated over the sea a prolonged cry like the wild shriek of some captured town.

Then all was still again.

What had happened along that moonlit coast?

Night waned. Morning dawned with all the fair golden glory of that southern clime.

On the sh.o.r.e of Isola Sacra stood a man, his gaze fixed eastward as it had been fixed ever since the growing light had enabled him to perceive distant objects with any degree of distinctness.

The British regiment at Corfu would have failed to recognize their captain in this man with his wild air, blood-shot eyes, and haggard face staring continually over the sea.

For the twentieth time his shaking hands raised the field-gla.s.ses.

Whenever he turned the binoculars to that point of coast where Castel Nuovo should have been, he found that Castel Nuovo was not there.

Focus the gla.s.ses as he would, he could not detect a trace of the edifice. The blue sea seemed to be rolling over the site!

In like manner other landmarks along the coast had disappeared, notably a white lighthouse a few miles to the north of Castel Nuovo.

The mountains, too, seemed to present an outline differing from that of the previous day.

Then the truth in all its ghastliness broke upon Paul, and, strong man though he was, he dropped upon the sands as one dead.

The explanation was simple and terrible.

During the night an earthquake had devastated the coast of Dalmatia; towns had been laid in ruins; scores of people had perished; and, among a crowd of minor catastrophes enumerated by the "Zara Times" of that week, was the complete submergence of a picturesque edifice, erected in the fourteenth century by the Doge Marino Faliero, and known by the name of Castel Nuovo!

THE STORY

CHAPTER I

TWO YEARS AFTERWARDS

"Here's to the Princess of Czernova!" cried Noel Trevisa,--a dark-eyed, handsome young fellow,--raising his gla.s.s as he spoke.

"Have you seen her yet, Paul?"

Captain Cressingham, or to use the new name a.s.sumed by him on the death of a relative, Captain Woodville, smiled at the enthusiasm with which his friend proposed the toast.

"I entered Slavowitz only last evening," he replied, "and have already been asked that question six times. It seems to be the first one put to a visitor."

"And when you have seen her you will cease to wonder at the pride of the Czernovese in their princess. Natalie Lilieska is more than beautiful,--she is Beauty's self."

This interchange took place on an elevated balcony of the Hotel de Varsovie, the princ.i.p.al establishment of its kind in Slavowitz, the picturesque capital of the old Polish princ.i.p.ality of Czernova.

Between Paul and his companion stood a marble-topped table decorated with a bottle of Chartreuse and a box of cigars, and in the quiet enjoyment of these luxuries the two Englishmen yielded themselves to lazy abandon in the soft sunshine of a spring morning, watching the gay current of Czernovese life as it flowed along the boulevard beneath their feet.

Two years had elapsed since the night when Barbara had been carried off to perish, as Paul believed, in the engulfing of Castel Nuovo.

A fishing-barque pa.s.sing by next morning had taken Paul from the island; its arrival was timely, for the vessel had scarcely gone half-a-mile when the sea became violently agitated, and Isola Sacra itself disappeared beneath the waves. The frightened fishermen, perceiving that the force of the earthquake was not yet spent, refused to put in on the Dalmatian coast, believing it to be safer on water than on land. For four-and-twenty hours they kept out on the deep, disembarking only when they deemed the peril past.

The moment Paul touched land he made his way to the vicinity of Castel Nuovo, and found its site covered by the sea. Must he believe that the last resting-place of Barbara was fathoms deep below these waves? He rowed to and fro over the spot, peering through the singularly transparent water, and sometimes fancying that he could discern the ghostly outline of towers and battlements.

Had Barbara really been lodged at Castel Nuovo during the night of the earthquake, or at some other place?

Inquiries carried on by him within a wide area around Castel Nuovo yielded no tidings as to the missing maiden. Barbara, Jacintha, Lambro, were like the shadows of a past dream.

Blank despair settled upon Paul. Life seemed scarcely worth living.

Then came news that the British troops stationed at Corfu had been ordered to India to suppress a rising among the hill-tribes of the frontier.

Paul, whose first impulse had been to resign his commission, now decided to accompany his regiment lest his retirement on the eve of war should be attributed to a spirit of cowardice. The fierce thrill of fighting might help to drown the memory of Barbara--for a time.

And since life without her was hard to bear, he cherished the hope that an Afghan spear might give him the death he desired.

On his arrival at Corfu, Paul learned that, owing to the death of a wealthy aunt, he was now master of considerable landed property in Kent, subject to the condition that he should a.s.sume his relative's name of Woodville. Paul mechanically acquiesced, and was henceforth gazetted as "Captain Woodville."

"Cressingham or Woodville, what matters?" he said. "Soon to be a little dust, I hope."

This legal formality over, he hurried off to India.

In the campaign that followed he did not die; on the contrary, he lived to gain a brilliant reputation,--a reputation destined, though he foresaw it not, to stand him in good stead during a political crisis of the future.

In a small border-fortress he found himself one of a garrison of four hundred men besieged by an Afghan force twenty times its own number.

It was winter, and the mountain-pa.s.ses were filled with snow.

Weeks must elapse ere relief could come. Scantily provided with artillery, their provisions running out, sleepless from incessant attacks, the heroic little band kept grimly to the work.

Early in the siege the major in command, with two or three officers, yielding to a spirit of fear strange in English soldiers, proposed in council an unconditional surrender.

"We were sent here," said Paul, darkly and haughtily, "to hold the fortress, not to cede it. If you do not know your duty, Major, there are those who will teach it you. I will shoot the first man that talks again of surrender, be he commandant or be he private."

And without delay Paul took strong measures. He put his own superior, together with the recreant officers, under arrest, and he himself took the command. Upon this there arose from the garrison, when informed of what had taken place, a ringing British cheer that startled the enemy in their distant entrenchments.

Paul henceforth was the soul of the fight,--at the head of every sortie, charging the enemy regardless of their number. The garrison attributed his conduct to sheer devilry; it was, in truth, the despairing mood of a man bent on finding death.

Ever amid the clash of arms he seemed to see before him the beautiful face of her whom he had lost, and scarcely conscious of the fact, he would cry "Barbara! Barbara!" to the bewilderment of his men. The wild Afghans shrank back in dismay whenever the "Feringhee devil" turned his dripping sabre in their direction, deeming the "bar-bar-a" uttered by him to be a magic spell capable of dealing death around.