LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 66, 17 August 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

IN DANGER. IN FOUR CHAPTERS. [From “Chamber’s Journal 1 ”] Continued. A remarkable man, in his way, was this local manager, the Company’s chief official at our small station. His name was Menelaus MThinn, and he was a native of Donegal or Antrim, one of those north of Ireland descendants of Scottish colonists who contrast so forcibly with the mercurial Celts of Clare or Kerry. He was over sixty years of age, but more vigorous than many a youth who had been more tenderly nurtured, and was indeed as grim, rugged, and unbending as the basalt pillars of Staffa, or the iron-bound cliffs of his own wild coast. ‘ I was hard raised,’ he would say with a stony smile of self-com-placency ; * bound ’prentice, at nine years old, sir, to a North Sea fishing skipper ; next, at fourteen, aboard a collier brig, where kicks and cuffs were plenty, and sleep and provisions on short allowance. No one who hasn’t kept watch barefoot on a deck heaped up with snae-drift and half-froze hailstones, or that hasn’t hauled at slippery ropes that the cauld weather had turned to ice rather than hemp, can tell how it hardens a boy.’ I congratulated Mr MThinn on his having gone so satisfactorily through the case-har-dening process in question, and presently learned further particulars of his life. A rough life had it been, since the novitiate on board the collier vessel had been succeeded by certain whaling and sealing voyages to Greenland, Spitzbergen, and other spots in high latitudes ; then, by the part-ownership of an Archangel merchant-barque ; presently by the command of a Russian river-steamer, which in turn gave way to the responsible position of superintendent of a shipbuilder’s yard on the Sea of Azof, a branch of industry rudely put an end to by the Crimean war. Since then, Mr McPhinn had filled many posts, more or less precarious, in the Asiatic territories of the Czar; and being a man of known integrity, and well acquainted with the Russian character, had received from our Company the snug appointment of local manager. He had savings, gradually accumulated in the course of a thrifty and laborious career, and which were no doubt des-

tined for those nieces, daughters of a younger sister, of whose accomplishments, acquired at a fashionable boarding-school, he spoke with honest pride, and to whose support I imagine that he contiibuted with a liberality in strong contrast with his own rigid-self-denial.

The other Europeans at the station -were not very notable. There was a fat, spectacled young German clerk, a mere machine for double entry and correspondence; and a sallow Russian, who periodically asked for leave of absence to gamble away, at the nearest town, his quarter’s salary. We had two or three mechanics from Britain, smiths 0' shipwrights, intelligent workmen well worth their high wages, and who were foremen of the different gangs of Russian and Cossack artizans. And we had two young Irish engineers, my so-called assistants, whom Mr M'Phinn pithly described a 1 harebrained gowks’ and 1 hard bargains,’ and whose blunders and ignorance cost me many an hour of extra labor. However, Messrs Leary and O’ Dwyer were thoroughly goodhearted young fellows, and when they found that I was willing to coach them through their calculations, and get their instruments into order, instead of reporting them at head-quarters for incompetence and neglect, they really did make some efforts to be useful in their allotted duties, and were always friendly and good-humored. My owu post, as I soon found, was no sinecure, for independent of the fact that we had two vessels on the stocks, and a harbor in course of construction, frequent surveys, sometimes at a considerable distance from home, had to be undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the capabilities of the country. I was allowed three horses and their keep, no great expense in a district where Tortar ponies are to be bought and fed at a cost that would seem ludicrous to a London jobmaster, and I rode fast and far into the interior, besides visiting, by the help of a red-sailed Turkish fishing-craft, every creek, bay, islet, and sandbar in the gulf. My main task was, of course, to press ou the completion of the harbor-works, and this was no light matter Tire Company’s head surveyor had decided that it was practicable to deepen an ancient channel of the Kur river, lovg silted up, and to construct a fine harbor where now nothing but a tiny thread of water came trickling down between the variegated sandbanks. We had a steam-dredge boat at work, but fuel often failed us, and the supply of labor was more precarious still. There was something exquisitely provoking to one fresh from the stir and bustle of Western Europe in witnessing the indolent apathy of those on whose muscle and sinew we relied for the execution'of our projects. It is customary,in several parts of West Central Asia, for handicraftsmen to agree in a compromise as regards the respective holy-days enjoined by church, mosque, and synagogue. Thus, not only the Christian Sunday, but the Sabbath of the Jews, and the Friday of the Moslems, are observed, as far as rest from labour goes, by the votaries of all religions, and we had to put up as best we might with a custom which deprived us of nearly half the week’s work.

It was not merely, however, that the working days were few, but the most annoying circumstance was that the motley gangs of toilers who mustered at our call frittered away the golden hours with that grand indifference to time which seems innate in the oriental mind. They would work for a spell ‘ like men,’ to use Mr MThinn’s emphatic laconism, and then suddenly knock off, kindle the fragrant tobacco in their rude waterpipes, and sit down for a smoke in utter disregard of the remonstrances of the foreman. Sometimes a quarrel arose, and a ring would be formed, and a wrestling bout occur, while the barrows stood empty, and the chinks of the shovels ceased. They never could resist the attractions of a travelling juggler, ballad-singer, or pedlar ; and even the sight of a strange vessel standing in for the shore made them drop pick and mallet, and crowd like so many schoolboys to the beach. At the same time, they were goodhumoured, not lacking in intelligence, and but too demonstrative in their respect, kissing our hands, and making endless salaams and genuflexions before us, and meekly enduring the reproofs which their conduct often rendered necessary. The manager, who was in theory a stern disciplinarian, used to frown severely upon them, and mutter dark threats concerning a ‘ rope’s end ; but even he in private admitted to m° that they were ‘no just that bad, dawdling ne’erdoweels as they are while I found myself able after a while to gain some influence over them, and to enforce comparative steadiness at their tasks. Petty rewards, some lecturing, and not a little banter, an occasional treat, and care to set a good example as regarded regularity, did wonders with the untutored natures of those for whom I was responsible; and before long I had the satisfaction of seeing the works make tolerate progress. It was a well-employed, but at the same time a remarkably uneventful existence that we led at Kisil-Gatch, and as I walked to and fro, listening to the blows of the mallets, and the dull, heavy thud of the “monkey ”- engine as the massive piles were driven deep into the mud, or noting the gradual growth of the steamers, as the iron plates were riveted together, I used often to cast my eyes over the measureless stretch of the lake-sea, marvelling how life could possibly be so prosaic in a region reputed so« romantic. Those white lateen sails seen so far away on the horizon, could they be the harbingers of a marauding flotilla of Turcoman pirates, such as were once the terror of these waters, come to sweep off into Khivan slavery the dwellers on the coast ? No: the Russian gunboats had effectually cleared this part of the Caspian from turbaued freebooters, and the sails were probably those of pcacefu’ Persian traders. The trampling of horsehoofs and cloud of dust did not, as of old, announce Uzbegs or Kirghiz on a foray, but quiet merchants from Tashkend or from Samarcand, carrying musk and spices and brick-tea, and white brass from China, and shawls from Tibet, and dressed yak-leather, to barter for the produce of Armenia and Daghestan,

Only once did any noteworthy incident occur to vary the monotony of our, or rather of my laborious life. 1 was riding homewards one evening, along the stony shore of the gulf, and looking forth, musingly, over the waters of the bay as they gradually darkened while the sun sank lower and lower beneath the red bluffs to westward, when a voice addressed me, cautiously, and in the Latin tongue, from behind the shelter of a rock that bordered on the road. The voice was weak and low, and the words, which on paper would have probably seemed familiar enough, sounded strangely to my car, but I reined up my horse and gazed around for some signs of the unseen speaker.

‘ Are you alone, 0 Doraine?’ said the feeble voice again; and this time I dismounted, and Slipping the bridle of my horse over a vhorny shrub that grew near, I made my way through the bushes and long grass, and soon reached the place where lay the person who had accosted me.

It was a sight that I shall never, to my dying day, forget. Crouching under the lee of a rock, and screened by the rank grass and saplings, lay, like a wounded wild beast in its lair, the emaciated figure of a young, a very young man, miserably clad in a tattered gr.iy coat and a pair of old legimental trousers. He was bareheaded, and his long dark hair hung in neglected elf-locks about his haggard face—a handsome face withal, but thin, pinched, and sunburnt; while the largo bright eyes, the size of which seemed unnatural by contrast with the excessive emaciation of the cheeks, were fixed on me with the wistfulness which we may observe in those of a hurt or hunted animal. His shoes had been cut to pieces by long walking, and one foot fwas bare, while the other was wrapped in a blood-stained piece of rag. A little wallet of plaited rushes, and a stick, lay beside him on the ijrass. and I could sec that the former contained a handkerchief and one or two other small objects, as well as a handful of the ears of half-ripe corn. There he lay, propped on one feeble arm ; and as he caught my eyes fixed on him with natural compassion, ho murmured again, and in Latin as before : ‘ Panem —da—da. For the love of God, bread !’ ‘ My poor fellow, you are ill, or have mot with an accident perhaps,’ said I, doing my best to make myself intelligible in that spoken Latin which is yet, in Poland and Hungary, what it once was throughout the wide extent of the empire of the Cicsars : ‘ I will go at once to fetch help, and’ ‘No, no !’ the sufferer interrupted me, with nervous eagerness. ‘No; you must call no one, tell to no one that you have seen me. They would have me again did they know where lam.’

This sentence puzzled me considerably. Of what was this famished wayfarer afraid 1 My first impulse had been to regard him as a Christian slave escaping from captivity among the savage Turcomans of the north, east coast of the Caspian, but now I began to doubt whether I had not to do with a madman who had eluded his keepers, or possibly, though the poor fellow’s looks were very prepossessing. with a convict who had broken prison. The poor wretch seemed to read my thoughts, for he stretched out his thin hand towards me, and said in a half whisper, but eagerly : ‘No ; I am not mad, No ; lam no thief. Give bread to a perishing man—but keep secret—Pole —Siberia — escaped !’ His eyes closed, and I thought that he had fainted, but in a moment more he gained strength enough to say ; ‘ I have lain here long -more than a day—and have seen many pass, but dared not speak. You are not a Russian lord, and will have mercy.’ To he cen t hived.