Chapter X: The Corporal in His Own Trap

Balgonie was rather weary after his long and desultory ride by rough and unfrequented roads, chiefly devious forest paths; he felt thirsty, and looked at the pitcher of quass.

"Will his Excellency drink?" asked Nicholas Paulovitch, in his hoarse and husky voice.

Now as quass is simply a species of sour beer, made of rye and oatmeal, coloured by a red berry, and is generally the beverage by which the Russians wash down their coarse bread and salt, Balgonie declined: the Stepniak proposed to add thereto a dash of train oil; but the suggestion made the young officer shudder.

"I have fortunately one bottle of Rhine wine," said the woodman, with a rapid and furtive glance at his comrades; "his Excellency will doubtless honour us by taking it with his supper, at least with such fare as the forest produces, a stewed rabbit or so."

"I thank you, good fellow. Where is this cottage situated?"

"Situated," repeated Nicholas, with a quick and uneasy glance at the Corporal, fearing there might be some discrepancy in their information.

"Yes, in what part of the country?" said Podatchkine; "for we naturally wish to know."

"Near Velie."

"Then I am somewhere about forty versts from the Louga?"

"Yes, Excellency, precisely," replied the rascal.

"Hence, if my horse is fresh, I may reach Schlusselburg to-morrow?"

"Scarcely, as it lies fully a hundred versts beyond Velie," said Nicholas.

"Is the distance so great?" exclaimed Balgonie, little knowing that it was even more, and all unsuspicious of how these wretches were deluding him.*

* The cottage of those assassins is said to have been situated ten versts, or about eight miles distant from Louga on the road to Velie. _Vide_ dispatch from General Weymarn to the Empress, dated 8th August, "concerning Carl Ivanovitoh Balgonie, a Scottish Captain in the Regiment of Smolensko."--_Utrecht Gazette_.

"But, Excellency, we may prove more able guides than Michail Podatchkine," said the gipsy woodman; "for we--that is the Stepniak and I--must proceed to St. Petersburg to-morrow, on a little piece of business we shall have to perform together."

"Poor devils!" thought Podatchkine, "if you take his body to St. Petersburg, you will both be accused of murder and knouted, as sure as my name is Michail; so I shall save my fifty silver roubles."

Even at the present day in Russia, few will venture to receive or meddle with a dead body, or attempt to succour a dying or a drowning person, in dread of the dangerous accusations and extortions of the police.

A sound, as of footsteps, and of something like a drinking vessel falling on the floor of an upper apartment, made the woodman start up with an oath of astonishment and alarm. He hurriedly applied a ladder to the trap which gave admission to this place, and ascended into it; but returned almost immediately to say, "there was no one there." The evident surprise and alarm of the three men at this trivial occurrence, is said to have been the first cause of exciting Balgonie's suspicion.

He glanced at the Stepniak, who sat silently observant in a corner, drinking his quass, with his feet resting against the rude peitchka, or stone stove, which was built into the log wall of the cottage, and when surveying his vast bulk and colossal stature, together with his singularly ferocious aspect, the reflection occurred to him, that he should have placed his pistols in his girdle instead of leaving them in the holsters of the saddle.

He was the reverse of timid; he was "brave even to rashness, and had faced death many times" (to quote General Weymarn) since his career of wandering began; but the idea certainly did flash upon his mind, that his situation in that lonely forest had its perils, and that two men more repulsive in aspect and in bearing than the gipsy and Stepniak, he had never seen, even in Russia.

Was it some mysterious and intuitive sense of danger drawing near that made such thoughts pass through the steady mind of Balgonie?

He and Podatchkine were both armed, and even were these men outlaws, they would scarcely, he believed, dare to assault an officer on military duty; besides, the very name of Schlusselburg, whither he was proceeding, carried a wholesome terror with it; so dismissing his casual suspicions, Charlie unbuckled his sword, and seated himself at the table, on which a cold supper of stewed rabbits and coarse rye bread was laid for the four who were present.

A platter was placed for a fifth person whom Nicholas remarked to Podatchkine in a growling tone was still abroad in the forest, or had not returned from some place which was named in a whisper.

With an affectation of extreme respect and courtesy, none of the three worthies would seat themselves at the table, until Balgonie specially invited and urged them in succession to do so.

The bottle of Rhine wine was produced from the apartment above and opened. The length of the cork and the dust on the bottle (wherever it came from originally) argued well of the contents, and two horns, one of which, had a handsome silver rim, were placed for the Captain and the Corporal.

The former was rather surprised to find such a drinking vessel as this silver mounted cup in a place so squalid, and he was about to lift and examine it, when Nicholas Paulovitch, with almost nervous haste, filled it, and also that of the Corporal, to the brim.

To the surprise of Balgonie, the latter exhibited some undisguised alarm on seeing wine placed before _him_; it was an attention under all the circumstances he neither wished nor expected; and so he declined to drink of it, saying that he was "a true Russ, and would adhere to the quass."

"Nay, fear not, friend Michail," said the woodman, "'tis the best of Rhine wine. The cup with the silver mounting is of course for his Excellency the Hospodeen," he added with a quiet but grim significance, which the wily Cossack quite understood, so he drained the wine horn without further objection.

Soon after having supped, and imbibed his full share of the wine bottle, Balgonie expressed a desire for repose, as he wished to depart by daybreak; but he had other reasons for retiring so early. He did not much relish the society of the gipsy, the Stepniak, and the Corporal of Cossacks; and he wished to indulge in reverie, to commune with himself, and let the current of his thoughts run undisturbed on Natalie and their adieus.

"This way, Excellency," said Nicholas, with alacrity, lifting the pine torch in its iron loutchin, and ushering him up the stair, a mere common ladder, and through the trap-door into the little apartment above, where his couch, composed merely of skins of the bear and sheep awaited him, and where he could see the dark forest and the occasional stars through a small window that gave light and air to the place, which was so limited in size, that it somewhat resembled a little cabin in a ship.

Left in this miserable den to his own reflections and to darkness--when Nicholas descended with the pine torch, carefully closed the trap-door and secured it on the lower side by a wooden bolt, moreover, softly removing the ladder--Charlie Balgonie placed his sword conveniently at hand, and cast himself upon the pile of skins that were to form his bed, and thought he had often fared worse in the bivouacs of Silesia and Bavaria.

"So--he is safe," said Nicholas Paulovitch, looking upward with a grin of savage satisfaction at the closed trap, as he replaced the loutchin on the table, and then closely scrutinised the Corporal, whose eyes had already become red and inflamed.

"Hush!" said Podatchkine, "take care."

"Why?" asked Nicholas, in a hoarse whisper.

"Because all may not be yet as you wish it, and in Russia sometimes the tongue flays the shoulders and cuts off the head."

"True," said the hitherto taciturn Stepniak, who was carefully feeling the keen edge of his hatchet; "as the Tartars have it, 'when you have spoken the word, it rules over you; while it is yet unspoken, you rule over it.' But it seems to me, Michail Podatchkine, that you have taken a great deal of trouble, and wasted much time in the matter of this dispatch. As you passed through the forest together, why the devil did you not give him a good _tzchick_"--(which we can only render "prod")--"in the back with your lance?"

"Because, if a wound is found on him, folks might say he had been murdered; and he must bear not a scar."

"And neither shall you, friend Podatchkine," said Paulovitch with a cruel grin.

"Come--don't make unpleasant jests," growled the Corporal, with a yawn and a shudder; "wounds have not been fashionable since Orloff and Bernikoff supped with Peter III."

"You grow wary as you grow older, Corporal."

"I have no desire to travel with the next caravan to Siberia, with one side of my head and face shaved, and an iron rosary, some five pound weight, at my wrists."

"Fear not--you will never see Siberia."

"Then you have made all sure about this Ivanovitch Balgonie?" said Podatchkine, whose utterance was becoming somewhat inarticulate.

"Ay, sure enough; the cups were----"

"The cups!"

"The cup, I mean, was drugged with those black berries which grow in the forest hereabout; the same stuff used by fine ladies to whiten their hands."

"But why the cup and not the wine?"

"For this reason: I might have been constrained to drink with him; and I had no desire to fall, like some one else, into a trap of my own baiting."

Podatchkine, on whom the powerful soporific with which his cup had been drugged--the sleepy nightshade--had been rapidly taking effect, and whose small cunning eyes had been opening and shutting alternately, while a numbness stole with a weariness over all his faculties, seemed suddenly to grasp at the terrible meaning of the speaker. He gave a start--he essayed to rouse himself and shout, but in doing so, toppled off his stool, and sank on the clay floor in a profound slumber.

"At last!" said the half-breed, administering a kick to the prostrate figure; "at last he has gone to sleep; now to make sure that he shall never waken more. Ah! the Asiatic! he was just getting suspicious at the end."

"There are two kopecs in his pocket," said the Stepniak, after investigating the garments of the snorting Podatchkine, who was now breathing heavily through his red snub nose, which between his scrubby beard and his shock of hair, was almost the only feature of his face that was visible.

"Leave the kopecs where you found them!" said Nicholas, with a gipsy oath.

"Wherefore?" asked the Stepniak with surprise.

"It will seem all the more honest in thee, my good Stepniak, when you take the body--bodies, I should say--to the nearest military post. You have but to say you found them dead in the forest."

"And the wet clothing?"

"Dew or rain--what a head you have!"

"True--true; ah! what a man you are, Nicholas Paulovitch, so full of bright thoughts! That idea would never have occurred to me."

"Nor the other either. Quick, now; we have not a moment to lose!"

They extinguished the pine torch, and tying the Corporal's hands securely with a cord, carried him forth to the draw-well before the cottage. Then they substituted that worthy warrior's heels for the bucket which was usually appended to the rope, and permitting the winch to revolve softly and gently, lowered him down, snorting and gasping in his unnatural slumber, head foremost, into the deep dark water below!

The Stepniak turned the iron handle of the winch or windlass, while the gipsy guided the rope with its heavy burden. He was deliberately lowered down until only his heels remained above water, as the two wretches could see by the starlight when stooping and peering into the darkness below.

The snorting had ceased now!

The dying Corporal was heard to struggle with his hands, as if he sought to free them from the cords; a few babbles filled with air rose to the surface and burst. This continued for a minute, during which all was silent elsewhere, save the half-suppressed breathing of the two assassins, and the dreary sound of the night wind, as it shook the dark branches of the giant pines that towered in solemn gloom around them.

Nicholas Paulovitch listened intently, and kept his eyes fixed on the cottage where their other victim lay, as he doubted not, sunk in what was intended to be his last sleep.

Anon, all became still--deathly still--in the depths of the dark well; the rope ceased to vibrate, and the bubbles came no more.

"Let us leave him here for a few minutes, and now for the Captain and his dispatch! By the time that we return, the Corporal will be as stiff as if he stood for sale in the frozen market on the fête of St. Nicholas!" said the gipsy, with one of his diabolical grins; while the Stepniak, with a smile of satisfaction that showed all his huge yellow teeth, smoothed down to his eyebrows the thick coarse black hair that grew from the apex of his conical caput.

They now re-entered the cottage, and again lighted the torch in its iron loutchin. All remained just as they had left it; the quass pitcher, the wooden bowls, the two cups, and the empty wine bottle were on the table, and the platters, with the débris of their rustic supper; but the superstitious gipsy felt a species of shudder come over him, for when the torch flared up in the night wind and cast strange shadows on the dingy and discoloured walls of the log-hut, it seemed to his diseased imagination, for a moment, as if the outline of the drowned Corporal still occupied the stool on which he had been seated.

"Come," said he huskily, "the dispatch!--and then for the other!"

They listened intently, and placed the ladder against the trap-door. All was still--not even the breathing of Balgonie was heard. Ascending first, with a knife in his teeth, in case of unexpected resistance, the gipsy knocked thrice on the trap without receiving any response. He then withdrew the wooden bolt, pushed it up, and introducing his head and shoulders, held aloft the pine torch, and turned towards the bed of skins.

It was unoccupied; and in a moment he saw that the bare and desolate chamber was without a tenant!

"Malediction!" he shouted; "he has escaped us--but how? Search--search! He cannot be far off, after the dose I have given him; search--and we must use our hatchets now!"