The Strand Magazine/Volume 1/Issue 6/Anecdotes of the War Path
NE never can tell." This is a world of change, and anything beyond the limits of the most fertile imagination may happen to anyone, anywhere, at any moment.
Were I a bellicose Bellamy, I might incline towards "Looking backwards" from the standpoint of a hundred years hence, and thus, posing as a special of 1991, might sigh for the shortcomings of the past, and picture myself crossing, on an aerial machine, the erst dark Continent (now lit by electric light) at a pace which would have even shattered the nerves of the driver of an old Brighton express—"a ponderous steam conveyance which, a hundred years ago, succeeded the stage coach." Again, I might suppose myself sending sketches or despatches from remote battlefields by means of "the electric communicator," a coil carried in one's portmanteau, and which, by a simple mechanical arrangement—one end being secured at the office of your newspaper in Fleet-street or the Strand—unwinds as you travel, so that, wherever the fates have destined you to go, you may be in immediate communication with the editor of the journal you represent; nay, more, the electric current passing through your pen or pencil, simultaneously producing copy or sketches with a corresponding pen or pencil at the other end. I say, were I a sort of bellicose Bellamy, I might compare the possible perfection of the future with the shortcomings of to-day; but then, you see, I'm not, and, though quite content to admit that "one never can tell," I'm still more disposed in these "Anecdotes of the War-path," by sticking to the practical present, to convey some idea of the doings of correspondents at the front.
To begin with, an iron constitution is the best basis on which to build up the war special, whose gifts with pen or pencil will depend entirely on the diplomacy he possesses by means of which to get to the front himself, and, at the same time, keep sufficiently in touch with the rear, to be in perpetual communication with his own headquarters at home.
I remember how one, otherwise most brilliant Special, whose talent won for him a reputation which he continues to enjoy, came utterly to grief through want of that tact which enabled others, during the siege of Plevna, to get their articles and sketches through. Between the slowly, very slowly contracting girdle of Muscovite steel which encircled that place and the Danube, there was a perfectly free communication. The historic bridge of boats was crossed without difficulty, and, Roumania being thus reached, one was in direct, uninterrupted correspondence with the street beloved of Doctor Johnson. The Special in question, however, being assured by suave, courteous, and in many cases English-speaking officers, that the Russian Bear was the soul of honour, and the Russian field-post the most convenient mode of conveyance, put his despatches into the military post bags at Plevna. Then, "with a smile that was childlike and bland," did those Muscovite postal authorities receive them, stamp them officially—and—well, they were never seen again! Thus was a most daring Special, possessed of marvellous talent (I will not say if with pen or pencil) recalled to England, and, in that capacity, lost to the world. He lacked a diplomatic faculty, without which success is impossible to the war correspondent.
A case of a camp-kettle, too, comes vividly back to me, in which a man delayed his departure from London for three days in consequence of some fad about a peculiar commodity of this kind which was being specially made for him, and this when Europe was ablaze with war. Through that confounded camp-kettle he might lose the key to the position, yet the tinker came in facile princeps and that knight of the pen was nowhere. Happily, however, "fads " very seldom get to the front at all, or, if they do, change front themselves soon after their arrival.
It seems to me that the man who would win his spurs on the war-path must, by being ready to start at any moment, accept the inevitable in the light of "Kismit," and be prepared to turn circumstances, good, bad, or indifferent, to the best account possible; he will meet with fewer difficulties, and be better able to cope with those he does experience.
By the way, were you ever shadowed? The sensation, novel to begin with, is trying in the long run, and infinitely less endurable than being made prisoner of war, pure and simple.
I had this experience shortly after the entry of the Versailles troops into shattered, still burning, Paris.
"A substantial shadow."
My wandering propensities and the notes I from time to time made led to my being so persecuted that I would have done much to change places with Peter Schimmel, of shadowless fame. I think my nose, which, in polite society, might be called retroussé, must have suggested the tip-
tilted organ of the typical Teuton, and that hence suspicions of fresh complications were aroused. Suffice it to say I was shadowed by a hawk-eyed, hook nosed, beetle-browed, oily-looking, parchment-faced being, who seemed, by his very pertinacity, becoming my second self. I hurried from place to place in quest of incident, the pattering feet of my shadow—if I may so put it—announced his presence everywhere. I mounted an omnibus, and there was a double ascent up those spiral steps which led to the roof, that hawk-eyed shade was seated either by my side or with his back to me. In the evening I strolled down, say, the Boulevard des Capucines, while, with measured tread, smoking a cigarette the while, I was followed by the oily one; in short, through the many occupations of my life he was ever in my wake, till at last release came.
I was arrested and taken before the Commissary of Police, when it was discovered I had been mistaken for somebody else, and, with many apologies and regrets that I was not the rogue I might have been, I was released, my shadow being "unhooked," so to speak. And now, oddly enough, I had a morbid satisfaction in remembering the wild-goose chases I had taken that Government spy—up one street, down another, away into the suburbs of Paris, back to its centre, only to repeat the dose when I had time, till, more attenuated and cadaverous than ever, that hawk-eyed minion of the law could barely drag one leg after another. Strange as it may seem, when rid of him, I missed him, missed him awfully, I assure you; feeling quite lonely and incomplete without him, and should have been almost pleased to have had him tacked on again.
Those Parisian shadows suggest to me a strange shadow pantomime I once saw in Spain, during the Carlist campaign, at an engagement at Behobie. The fighting began at about five in the morning in a dense white fog, when the Carlists made a desperate effort to take that small town from an inferior but unflinching force. The effect was, on approaching the scene, most ludicrous. In the first place, one was strangely impressed by mingled sounds as of the barking of dogs and the quacking of ducks, which turned out to be only terms of derision which each side was hurling at the other. Then, on coming closer still, the shadow pantomime of which I have spoken presented itself, just for all the world like mimic war on a white sheet, till, the veil of fog lifting, fighting—literally to the knife—presented itself in all its terrible reality. Under cover of that fog the Carlist hordes had come down from their Pyrenean retreats without the aid of those arranged ruses which the armies of all nations have so often to fall back upon. Amongst these is the common one, when wind and locality serve, of attacking under cover of the smoke of burning forests or furze bushes. One ruse during the siege of Plevna has always struck me in this connection as having been cleverly conceived.
The Turks, on the occasion of a sortie, secured as many uniforms of dead Russians as was possible. These they promptly put on, and, covering their main body, advanced backwards, as if retreating in good order on a strong Russian position. The Turkish officer in command—understanding the Russian tongue—gave the order to "Retire." Seeing and hearing this, the Rus- sians, supposing it to be an unexpected retreat of their own men, made no defence, till, when too late, they discovered them to be Moslems in Muscovite garb, who, after a most sanguinary fight, succeeded in occupying the vantage point they had gained.
The eccentricities of bullets, too, are not a little interesting. There was a case in Asia Minor of a bullet which made six distinct holes of entry and exit in a man's body, without materially injuring him, before it passed away into the open. It may be explained that the man was in a kneeling position and firing at the time he was struck. This erratic ball passed first through the biceps of his right arm, between his ribs, and again through the triceps of his left arm. In Spain, also, I remember an instance in which a bullet passed through an officer's chacot, the draught of which stunned him; he was found quite insensible, though uninjured, while that chacot had been drilled with the ball which had thus prostrated him. On two occasions I have myself had similar and most providential escapes—once at a place known as La Puncha, on the banks of the Bidassoa, where, when sketching for The Illustrated London News, I was brought suddenly to the ground by a Carlist bullet, with one leg completely shattered, but then, you see, it was the leg of the camp stool on which I was seated; the other was when Conigsby, The Times' correspondent, and myself were going in a drosky in the direction of Zimnitza, to join the Russians at Plevna.
Our route lay for some considerable distance along an exposed road by the side of the Danube, and it was then that the Turkish batteries on the opposite shore opened a deliberate fire on us with such telling effect that the back of our conveyance was considerably splintered, and a portmanteau against which I was leaning completely smashed, its contents being hardly recognisable. I am reminded, while on this subject, of how the correspondent to the Macon journal was once in imminent peril of being blown to atoms, a circumstance to which I was an eye-witness.
He was about to return through a huge wooden gate into a besieged Spanish town. During his absence of only about ten minutes, however, a large mortar had been put in position behind it, and a large roughly sawn aperture made. Just at the very moment of his return, it was fired, the draught sending him flying for some considerable distance!
Though within a hair's breadth of death, he was happily only bruised, while thus unwittingly seeking "the bubble reputation even at the cannon's mouth." Nor are the eccentricities of shot and shell more curious than those of cold steel, the most remarkable instance which I remember being that of a Russian and a Turk, who, meeting, fought to the death with fixed bayonets in a wood in Anatolia. The fatal thrusts. must have been simultaneous, the strange fact being that both stood, with their legs much apart, each with his bayonet embedded deeply in his adversary's breast, for several days, and were to be seen, still erect, in the attitude of their last terrible death-struggle.
But it's not with men alone that the wanderer on the war-path is in touch. His faithful ally, the horse, has a share of his sympathy, specially if in the course of his peregrinations he waded through the mud to headquarters in Bulgaria in 1877. Facts are stubborn things, and, when I say it was a matter of statistics that twenty-two thousand draught and other horses alone fell between Sistova and Plevna from the combined effect of fatigue and mud, it will be seen that "going to the front" is as difficult as getting to the rear—touching which, by the way, I may on another occasion have something interesting to say.
"Going to the front."
Mud! why, we were in a very sea of mud; it found its way over the tops of our jack-boots till it saturated our socks, this always happening when, and it was often, we dismounted to lend a hand at the spokes of our supply waggon, from the bottom of which came many-coloured streams of half-diluted coffee, weak tea, and moist, very moist sugar. Crimean mud is historic, yet one who had gone through that campaign and who was with me in Bulgaria assured me we ran it very close.
Dead horses were to be seen here, there, and everywhere, some having died in the most grotesque attitudes, and all the victims of that muddy deluge. In some cases, reaching as it did to our own horses' girths, we came to a standstill altogether, and it was only after hiring at enormous cost many others, to which we sometimes added oxen, that we could plough our way through it at all to some more elevated spot, with the prospect on our arrival of descending into an equally deep and depressing slough of despond within the next five minutes on the other side.
Did it ever strike you that the mother-in-law is often a much-misunderstood and under-valued individual?
If great men owe their greatness in many cases to maternal influence, is it not possible that even the much-derided mother-in-law may sometimes have had hers, too, on the destinies of mankind? Yet, it would seem in Servia—at least, when I was there, during that short but sharp campaign—that the mother-in-law was at a greater discount than here. And this is my reason—not a bad one, I take it—for coming to that conclusion. One morning, when in Belgrade, I saw a sturdy Serb being roughly hustled off to prison. Inquiring the cause, I found he had been condemned for the murder of his mother-in-law to five years' penal servitude, but that his conduct had been so exemplary that he had for some weeks been out on a sort of Servian ticket-of-leave. When I saw him, however, he had just committed an offence beside which the "ineffectual fire" of murder paled—he had stolen a leaden spoon from an ice-shop, and for this theft he was promptly executed the following morning—by which, I take it, leaden spoons must have been very scarce in Belgrade at that time, and mothers-in-law very plentiful.
Looking from that capital, which, unpicturesque in itself, is picturesquely situated at the juncture of the Trave and the Danube, the panorama presented of the shores of Hungary is most inviting, and at the time of which I am writing its effectiveness was added to by a large encampment of Pharaoh Nepeks—Hungarian gipsies. Ever on the alert for subjects for my pencil, I was not long before I chartered a small boat, and joined those wanderers, with whose brethren I had forgathered in many countries, and concerning whom I had written much and made innumerable sketches, and by whom I had always been received as a "Romany rye." This, however, was my first acquaintance with the Pharaoh Nepeks, of whose hospitality I cannot speak too highly. It appeared, however, that I had arrived at the moment of a political crisis. What the particular disagreement may have been—not understanding Romany sufficiently—I am unable to say. I only know that I had not been there many hours before a wordy warfare led to blows, and that encampment of about seven or eight hundred gipsies was at desperate logger-heads. Indeed, I have only on one occasion seen more frantic hand-to-hand fighting at close quarters in actual war.
Rushing on each other with long-bladed knives, they fought with a skill which must have been begotten of long practice, and terrible were the wounds which were presently inflicted; in fact, the matter was looked on as so serious that troops from the Hungarian garrison of Semlin, hard by, were sent to put a stop to the disturbance. This at once caused a diversion. Whatever their intestine troubles may have been, they were one against the invaders of their camp.
"A Nepek beauty."
It was at this moment, fired by the wildest enthusiasm, that a perfectly bewitching gipsy girl rushed forward and led her tribe against the common enemy. Bayonets, however, if sometimes brittle, are often stubborn things, and the steadily advancing lines of Hungarian troops quieted at last those desperate Nepeks; not, however, before many were severely wounded and numbers of prisoners taken, amongst whom I found myself being hurried off to a guard tent, much to my annoyance, since night was approaching, and I wanted to get back to Belgrade before sundown. That annoyance, however, short-lived, since I found myself placed in the same tent as that lovely young gipsy girl, to whom I had lost my all-too-susceptible heart an hour ago; indeed, then it was that I made the rough sketch which illustrates this article. Her chiselled features, the wildfire in her sloe-black eyes, her dishevelled hair, and the coins and beads with which those locks were interwoven, her torn green velvet bodice and coarse salmon coloured skirt are all as vividly before me now as then. Nor did she seem averse to my companionship, especially when she found I could make myself understood through the medium of two languages—that of Romany, which is, of course, common to gipsies of all nationalities, and that of the eye, which is common to humanity at large. Indeed, when, later on, we were liberated, my freedom came all too soon. I had been made captive by one who now had to return to her kinsfolk, while I, in melancholy mood, was pulled across "the Danube's blue waters" in the direction of Belgrade, casting, as I did so, many furtive glances behind at my fair fellow-prisoner, who, with several others, was waving me adieux from the shore; and I think, if I remember rightly, in my dreams that night, coils of dishevelled raven hair and sloe-black eyes played a conspicuous part.
Should you ever be called upon to assist at an operation on the leg of a fellow-creature under circumstances in which chloroform is not obtainable, insist on holding the wounded or otherwise affected limb. I speak advisedly, since I recall, while writing, a little incident which happened to me in the hospital at Belgrade on the occasion of my bringing to that place several men who had been wounded at Delegrad and Alixenatz. One of these had to go through the painful process of probing for a bullet, which had taken up its quarters somewhere in the calf of his left leg.
"Hold his right leg, Montagu," said Dr. McKeller, the head of the medical staff (than whom there was never a more brilliant Britisher on the war-path); "hold on to the right, and we'll look after the left." There was a merry twinkle in his eye which, at the time, I only attributed to his natural good humour.
Directly the probe made itself felt, that right leg was drawn up till the knee almost touched the nose of the patient, when, the pain becoming unbearable, that leg, to which I was still clinging, shot out straight, and, striking me in the chest, sent me, like a pellet from a catapult, flying across the ward, greatly to the merriment of the assembled doctors and nurses. Never, I say, under any circumstances, unless you are a Hercules, undertake, unaided, to hold—the other leg.
In these rambling reminiscences I wish rather to give to the reader a rough résumé of some few of my experiences than make any attempt at an abbreviated story of my life. Thus it is I pass in rapid review such incidents as in accidental succession present themselves. Indeed, as I write, I am reminded, by the snarls and contention for a bone of several dogs in the street below, of the Fosse Commune at Erzeroum, a deep entrenchment across which those who would from any point enter that grimy Oriental city have to pass on rough wooden bridges.
"War, pestilence and famine."
There must be some Eastern sentiment which necessitates the Turks of Anatolia being more or less in touch with the dead—otherwise why those mangy man-eaters (no, not tigers, but half savage dogs) which prowl about o' nights in the by-ways of Erzeroum, or scratch up in the graveyards, as they too often do, all that remains of poor humanity, which, in this part of the world, is but thinly and lightly covered with mother earth? The backs of these scavengers, raw, and sometimes bleeding, tell too plainly the nature of their calling, since they suffer from a peculiar scurvy so induced. When the commissariat is low, they go further afield, even to that cordon of corruption outside the place, where vultures, hawks, owls, and other birds of prey fight or forgather with wolves and such like four-footed adventurers, and where, though metaphorically the man-eater takes a back seat, he still picks UP some loathsome trifles—the menu is not perhaps so choice as in his own graveyards, but the supply is plentiful enough in all conscience—everything corruptible, from a dead cat to a dead camel, finding a last resting-place somewhere within that seething circle.
Hark! Do you hear the thunder of the guns in the Devé Boyun Pass yonder? Do you see the smoke mingling with the fleeting clouds in the far distance? How complete a picture this—could you see it as I do now in my mind's eye—of "war, pestilence, and famine!"
It's a far cry from Anatolia to Bulgaria, from Erzeroum to the Russian lines round about Plevna; but such a flight to pen and pencil on the plains of paperland is nothing. Thus do we now, on the wings of fancy, find ourselves at Porodim, in the Cossack camp, during Osman Pasha's stubborn resistance—where Conigsby, of The Times, and McGahan, of The Daily News, and many others, including myself, were later on sending home news or sketches, and awaiting developments.
Not unlike a sack of potatoes on legs, your average Cossack, when he has dismounted, has more the clumsiness of the clown than the cut of the crack cavalry soldier about him, while his peculiar aversion to water at once negatives any notion of personal smartness, from a European point of view. On the other hand, put him in the stirrups, mount him with all his paraphernalia on his shaggy little steed, and he will ride, if need be, "through fire, and—if quite unavoidable—water," too, if it be only the will of the Czar.
"Tit-bits at the front."
It's a beautiful, nay, touching sight to see the Cossack of the Don at the first streak of early dawn on commissariat duty. As an explorer and discoverer of dainties in obscure hen-roosts, he stands—save for Reynard himself—alone; seldom returning without bringing in trophies on his lance-head which will give a zest to the Major's breakfast—or—his own.
One morning at Porodim several correspondents and myself were making desperate efforts to break the ice with a view to something like a lame apology for the homely tub. At length, having succeeded in doing so, we commenced our ablutions, and soon found ourselves the subject of comment on the part of several burly fellows, who seemed quite entertained at our proceedings.
"Wonderful!" said a Cossack Corporal, turning to my interpreter Nicholoff. "Wonderful! Englishmen, are they? Why, they wash in the winter time!"
While on the subject of Cossacks, several odd incidents present themselves:
The Times correspondent and myself having one day secured (no matter how) a fowl, promptly proceeded to pluck, cook, cut up and—but no, I mustn't put the cart before the horse—we were interrupted in our arrangements for the midday meal by the passing of a number of ox-teams, taking supplies of all kinds to the front, which were driven by Cossack camp followers. One of these, allowing his oxen to continue the even tenor of their way, stopped for a moment to take in the situation. Our preparations evidently amused him, and we, noting his interest in our movements—more especially, The Times correspondent—indulged in a certain amount of Anglo-Saxon badinage, at which that Cossack seemed to wonder more vaguely than before, till my companion felt it quite safe to say—in the vulgar vernacular, holding up at the same time his half of that mutilated fowl before the burly bullock driver—"There now, I dare say you'd make small bones of that if you could get it, wouldn't you?"
In an instant the Cossack had seized the dainty morsel in his grimy grip; the next it was quite beyond reclaim between his teeth, and then, to our utter astonishment, in unmistakable North Country dialect he said:-
"Wull, p'raps I shall, now I've got 'un; I'm a Yarkshermun, I am." And with this, munching to his infinite satisfaction that drum-stick as he went, he turned on his heel and rejoined his oxen.
On inquiry we found him to be a Yorkshire ne'er-do-weel, who, after many vicissitudes, had somehow enlisted in the Cossack contingent.
Before the siege was over, however, we had more than forgiven the unexpected appropriation of the succulent drum-stick.
"Home, sweet home."
One night—one of the most severe of that terrible winter—when such little wood as was obtainable
was almost too damp to ignite, myself and several other correspondents were sitting in sorry plight round an apology for a camp fire, half frozen, and utterly demoralised, in a condition, in fact, of benumbed misery, which I at least have never before or since experienced. Save for the lurid glare of Plevna, like a smouldering volcano in the distance, and the tread now and again of a sentry in the crisp snow, we might have been, as indeed we in some senses were, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Presently, however, a sound broke the stillness of the night—a sound which caused our hearts to throb, and circulated anew the blood in our half-frozen veins, a sound which spoke to each of "England, home, and beauty," of a welcome in store for us in the old country, of hopes realised, and promises fulfilled—that sound took the form of music, and probably the most acceptable form music, at such a moment, could take; for, proceeding from a rough reed pipe, there floated across to us on the cold night air the welcome old strains of "Home, sweet home" sympathetically, exquisitely rendered, it seemed literally to resuscitate us. Yes, indeed, we had each of us something to live for, much to be thankful for, and when afterwards we ascertained the player to have been none other than our Yorkshire Cossack, it was pleasant to reflect that if he had once played the dickens with our dinner he had more than recompensed us with "Home, sweet home."
Although we were sometimes in such sorry plight as I've referred to, Conigsby was well pleased to mix with the Muscovites; he had previously been accredited to the Turks, and at Philippopolis, Adrianople, and elsewhere, had been frequently warned that the strong Russian bias of his letters to The Times boded him no good; indeed, that "a cup of black coffee," as poison is politely termed by the Moslems, was in active preparation for him.
Loth to accept these hints, it's more than probable he would never have come to Plevna at all, had not a very forcible argument been presented to him. It happened thus:—The representative of Printing House-square—quite innocent of coming events—rose one morning rather earlier than usual. His room seeming unusually dark, he proceeded at once to draw up the blind, when, to his intense horror, he suddenly found himself face to face with a corpse—the corpse of a Bulgarian traitor—which, during the night, had been hoisted by means of pulleys outside his bedroom window. The Turks, to say the least of it, had a design on his appetite for breakfast. This gentle reminder was sufficient for him; he quite understood now how matters stood, and so exchanged as soon as possible to the Russian lines.
His successor, whose views, alas! were also Russophile, sent only a limited number of despatches to The Times. It was café noir that did it. I think he was buried at Scutari.
"A retreat in Spain."
I have heard it remarked by some stay-at-home critics of war that they "don't know what fear is," that they are, in other words, ready-made heroes for whom there is, unfortunately, no scope. To such I would recommend some of the minor emergencies of a campaign as tests worth trying. Personally, I am quite willing to confess to having experienced at times painfully unpleasant qualms, and fully believe that to do so is only human. Overcoming fear is declared by some to be heroic, and individual acts of unselfish bravery under such circumstances cannot certainly be too generously commended; but defend me from the untried swash-buckler who "doesn't know what fear is." Let him, as soon as occasion serves, take a dose of ignominious retreat—one dose before bedtime will be found quite sufficient. Let him experience a retreat, say, down a rugged mountain defile in Spain, with the enemy in comparatively close proximity on parallel ridge, a deep gorge between them, pouring in a deadly fire on retreating artillery and cavalry. This I experienced once not far from San Sebastian. "Everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost." I cite the apt quotation of my old friend Edmund O'Donovan, of The Daily News, who was there at the time. There was a tooth and nail illustration of that proverb then I shall never forget: panic reigned supreme, each struggling in mad confusion to be first out of the fray, yelling, shouting, hooting in their frenzy, even to the free use of the butt ends of carbines and revolvers, anything, in short, to clear the way for that best beloved and all-important "Number One."
It's astonishing, isn't it, with what jealous care poor humanity looks after number one, even though life be at a discount, as it was during the siege of Plevna, when one morning Conigsby and myself sallied forth in opposite directions in quest of material for our respective papers? Each in turn, though separated by some miles, found himself under a withering fire from Turkish rifle pits, and later on each found himself hastening for the kindly protection of the same advanced Russian earthworks.
"This, Montagu," said Conigsby, "is an incident which should not be overlooked. A sceptical world will never believe it—yet stay—unless—oh, yes, I have it. You do a picture for The Illustrated News representing our noble selves, specially your humble servant, you know, as we now are in the forefront of the fighting, while I write up the occurrence in The Times. Such corroborative evidence, which is, moreover, absolutely true, will place our zeal beyond question, and show the reading and picture-loving public that life at the front is not all 'beer and skittles.'"
That day is particularly marked on my memory as having been one of exceptional interest, incident, and hard work, terminating in a night made almost unbearable by the howling of wolves and the neighing of terror-stricken horses. With this—"An Attack on the Encampment of The Times and Illustrated London News," forming a subject for the pages of that journal and with Conigsby's version of the experience (it may be taken with several grains of salt), which he gave at a Press dinner on our return, I will bring this chapter of accidents and incidents to a close.
"Never, gentlemen," said he, "never on any account go to the front with a war artist. They are dangerous individuals, I assure you. Most of you will remember a certain illustration of Montagu's in which our camp was represented as being attacked by wolves; but you don't, I think, know the true story concerning it.
"One night, wearied beyond measure with a long day at the front, I was striving in vain to sleep through a medley of sounds in which the short, quick, raspy barking of wolves, and shouts of men striving to pacify scared horses, combined to make night hideous, when, unable to stand it any longer, I rushed into Montagu's tent—for, without enlisting his aid, I felt apoplexy must be the end of it—and aroused him.
"Montagu, my dear fellow, do you hear those wolves? They are simply unbearable. I have tried every expedient but one—it's our last resource. If there's one thing in this world more than another calculated to scare wolves it will be one of your pictures for The Illustrated London News! Whereupon I seized one of his latest productions, and, rushing out, faced those fiery invaders.
"The result was instantaneous. With a fearfully prolonged yelp they scuttled off helter-skelter to the hills, where they were very soon lost to sight.
"But, remember, I have already warned you against going to the front with a war artist, and would ask you now to listen to Montagu's terrible retaliation. Goodness knows, I am loth enough to admit it.
"Those wolves came back again, and then it was that he, rushing into my tent, said that lunacy, ay, raving madness, stared him in the face, unless the last die were cast—if that wouldn't settle them, nothing would. With this he grasped a half-finished article of mine to The Times, and confronting those wolves, read aloud to that astonished pack the first short paragraph. Then it was that, utterly panic-stricken, they fled, howling in wild confusion, to the Balcans, and I understand they have been scarce in Bulgaria ever since. Who, after this, will question for one moment the far-reaching influence of the British press?"
