Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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"Take care you be not mistaken, Colonel. Ammalat is, after all, an
Asiatic; and that name is always a proof. Here words hide thoughts--the
face, the soul. Look at one of them--he seems innocence itself; have any
thing to do with him, he is an abyss of meanness, treachery and
ferocity."

"You have a full right to think so, my dear Captain, from experience:
Sultan Akhmet Khan gave you a memorable proof in Ammalat's house, at
Bouinaki. But for me, I have no reason to suspect any mischief in
Ammalat; and besides, what would he gain by murdering me? On me depends
all his hope, all his happiness. He is wild, perhaps, but not a madman.
Besides, you see the sun is high; and I am alive and well. I am
grateful, Captain, for the interest you have taken in me; but I entreat
you, do not suspect Ammalat: and, knowing how much I prize an old
friendship, be assured that I shall as highly value a new one. Order
them to beat the march."

The captain departed, gloomily shaking his head. The drums rattled, and
the detachment, in marching order, moved on from its night-quarters. The
morning was fresh and bright; the road lay through the green ramparts of
the mountains of the Caucasus, crowned here and there with forests and
underwood. The detachment, like a stream of steel, flowed now down the
hills, and now crept up the declivities. The mist still rested on the
valleys, and Verkhoffsky, riding to the elevated points, looked round
frequently to feast his eyes with the ever-changing landscape.
Descending the mountain, the detachment seemed to be swallowed up in the
steaming river, like the army of Pharaoh, and anon, with a dull sound,
the bayonets glittered again from the misty waves. Then appeared heads,
shoulders; the men seemed to grow up, and then leaping up the rocks,
were lost anew in the fog.

Ammalat, pale and stern, rode next to the sharpshooters. It appeared
that he wished to deafen his conscience in the noise of the drums. The
colonel called him to his side, and said kindly: "You must be scolded,
Ammalat; you have begun to follow too closely the precepts of Hafiz:
recollect that wine is a good servant but a bad master: but a headache
and the bile expressed in your face, will surely do you more good than a
lecture. You have passed a stormy night, Ammalat."

"A stormy, a torturing night, Colonel! God grant that such a night be
the last! I dreamed dreadful things."

"Aha, my friend! You see what it is to transgress Mahomet's
commandments. The conscience of the true believer torments you like a
shadow."

"It is well for him whose conscience quarrels only with wine."

"That depends on what sort of conscience it is. And fortunately it is as
much subject to prejudice as reason itself. Every country, every nation,
has its own conscience; and the voice of immortal, unchangeable truth is
silent before a would-be truth. Thus it is, thus it ever was. What
yesterday we counted a mortal sin, to-morrow we adore. What on this bank
is just and meritorious, on the other side of a brook leads to the
halter."

"I think, however, that treachery was never, and in no place, considered
a virtue."

"I will not say even that. We live at a time when success alone
determines whether the means employed were good or bad; where the most
conscientious persons have invented for themselves a very convenient
rule--that the end sanctifies the means."

Ammalat, lost in his reflections, repeated these words, because he
approved of them. The poison of selfishness began anew to work within
him; and the words of Verkhoffsky, which he looked on as treacherous,
poured like oil on flame. "Hypocrite!" said he to himself; "your hour is
at hand!"

And meanwhile Verkhoffsky, like a victim suspecting nothing, rode side
by side with his executioner. At about eight versts from Kiekent the
Caspian Sea discovered itself to them from a hill; and the thoughts of
Verkhoffsky soared above it like a swan. "Mirror of eternity!" said he,
sinking into a reverie, "why does not your aspect gladden me to-day? As
of old, the sun plays on you; and your bosom breathes, as sublimely as
of old, eternal life; but that life is not of this world. You seem to me
to-day a mournful waste; not a boat, not a sail, not a sign of man's
existence. All is desolate!

"Yes, Ammalat," he added; "I am tired of your ever-angry, lonely sea--of
your country peopled with diseases, and with men who are worse than all
maladies in the world. I am weary of the war itself, of invisible
enemies, of the service shared with unfriendly comrades. It is not
enough that they impeded me in my proceedings--they spoiled what I
ordered to be done--they found fault with what I intended, and
misrepresented what I had effected. I have served my sovereign with
truth and fidelity, my country and this region with disinterestedness; I
have renounced, a voluntary exile, all the conveniences of life, all the
charms of society; have condemned my intellect to torpidity, being
deprived of books; have buried my heart in solitude; have abandoned my
beloved; and what is my reward? When will that moment arrive, when I
throw myself into the arms of my bride; when I, wearied with service,
shall repose myself under my native cottage-roof, on the green shore of
the Dnieper; when a peaceful villager, and a tender father, surrounded
by my relations and my good peasants, I shall fear only the hail of
heaven for my harvests; fight only with wild-beasts? My heart yearns for
that hour. My leave of absence is in my pocket, my dismission is
promised me.... Oh, that I could fly to my bride!... And in five days I
shall for certain be in Georgieffsk. Yet it seems as if the sands of
Libya, a sea of ice----as if the eternity of the grave itself, separated
us!"

Verkhoffsky was silent. Tears ran down his cheeks; his horse, feeling
the slackened rein, quickened his pace--and thus the pair alone,
advanced to some distance from the detachment.... It seemed as if
destiny itself surrendered the colonel into the hands of the assassin.

But pity penetrated the heart of Ammalat, maddened as he was, and
burning with wine--like a sunbeam falling in a robber's cave. He beheld
the sorrow, the tears of the man whom he had so long considered as his
friend, and hesitated. "No!" he thought, "to such a degree as that it is
impossible to dissimulate...."

At this moment Verkhoffsky started from his reverie, lifted up his head,
and spoke to Ammalat. "Prepare yourself: you are to go with me!"

Unlucky words! Every thing good, every thing noble, which had arisen
anew in Ammalat's breast, was crushed in a moment by them. The thought
of treachery--of exile--rushed like a torrent through his whole being
"With you!" he replied, with a malicious smile--"with you, and into
Russia?--undoubtedly: if you go yourself!" and in a passion of rage he
urged his horse into a gallop, in order to have time to prepare his
arms; suddenly turned back to meet him; flew by him, and began to ride
rapidly in a circle around him. At each stride of his horse, the flame
of rage burned more fiercely within him: it seemed as if the wind, as it
whistled past him, kept whispering "Kill, kill! he is your enemy.
Remember Seltanetta!" He brought his rifle forward from his shoulder,
cocked it, and encouraging himself with a cry, he galloped with
blood-thirsty decision to his doomed victim. Verkhoffsky, meanwhile, not
cherishing the least suspicion, looked quietly at Ammalat as he galloped
round, thinking that he was preparing, after the Asiatic manner, for the
djigitering (equestrian exercises.)

"Fire at your mark, Ammalat Bek!" he exclaimed to the murderer who was
rushing towards him.

"What mark can be better than the breast of a foe?" answered Ammalat
Bek, riding up, and at ten paces' distance pulling the trigger!... the
gun went off: and slowly, without a groan, the colonel sank out of his
saddle. His affrighted horse, with expanded nostrils and streaming mane,
smelt at his rider, in whose hands the reins that had so lately guided
him began to stiffen: and the steed of Ammalat stopped abruptly before
the corpse, setting his legs straight before him. Ammalat leaped from
his horse, and, resting his arms on his yet smoking gun, looked for
several moments steadfastly in the face of the murdered man; as if
endeavouring to prove to himself that he feared not that fixed gaze,
those fast-dimming eyes--that fast-freezing blood. It would be difficult
to understand--'twere impossible to express the thoughts which rolled
like a whirlwind through his breast. Saphir Ali rode up at full gallop;
and fell on his knees by the colonel--he laid his ear to the dying man's
mouth--he breathed not--he felt his heart--it beat not! "He is dead!"
cried Saphir Ali in a tone of despair. "Dead! quite dead!"

"So much the better ... My happiness is complete!..." exclaimed Ammalat,
as if awakening from a dream.

"Happiness for you--for you, fratricide! If you meet happiness, the
world will take to Shaitan instead of Allah."

"Saphir Ali, remember that you are not my judge!" said Ammalat fiercely,
as he put his foot into the stirrup: "follow me!"

"May remorse alone accompany you, like your shadow! From this hour I am
not your companion."

Pierced to the very bottom of his heart by this reproach from a man to
whom he had been from infancy bound by the closest ties, Ammalat uttered
not a word, but pointing to his astounded noukers in the ravine, and
perceiving the pursuit begun, dashed into the mountains like an arrow.

The alarm soon spread through the advanced guard of the detachment: the
officers, who were in front, and the Don Kazaks, flew to the shot, but
they came too late. They could neither prevent the crime nor seize the
flying assassin. In five minutes the bloody corpse of the treacherously
murdered colonel was surrounded by a crowd of officers and soldiers.
Doubt, pity, indignation were written on all their faces. The
grenadiers, leaning on their bayonets, shed tears, and sobbed aloud:
unflattering drops poured above the brave and much-loved chief.

CHAPTER XIII.

For three days and nights did Ammalat wander about the mountains of
Daghestan. As a Mussulman, even in the villages subject to the Russian
dominion, he was safe from all pursuit among people for whom robbery and
murder are virtues. But could he escape from the consciousness of his
own crime? Neither his heart nor his reason could find an excuse for his
bloody deed; and the image of Verkhoffsky falling from his horse,
presented itself unceasingly before his eyes, though closed. This
recollection infuriated him yet more, yet more tortured him. The
Asiatic, once turned aside from the right road, travels rapidly over the
career of villany. The Khan's command, not to appear before him but with
the head of Verkhoffsky, rang in his ears. Without daring to communicate
such an intention to his noukers, and still less relying on their
bravery, he resolved upon travelling to Derbend alone. A darksome and
gloomy night had already expanded it ebon wings over the mountains of
Caucasus which skirt the sea, when Ammalat passed the ravine which lay
behind the fortress of Narin-Kali, which served as a citadel to Derbend.
He mounted to the ruined turret, which once formed the limit to the
Caucasian war that had extended through the mountains, and tied his
horse at the foot of that hill from which Yermoloff had thundered on
Derbend when but a lieutenant of artillery. Knowing where the Russian
officers were buried, he came out upon the upper burial-ground. But how
to find the new-made grave of Verkhoffsky in the darkness of the night?
Not a star glimmered in the sky: the clouds lay stretched on the hills,
the mountain-wind, like a night-bird, lashed the forest with its wing:
an involuntary shudder crept over Ammalat, in the midst of the region of
the dead, whose repose he dared to interrupt. He listens: the sea
murmurs hoarsely against the rocks, tumbling back from them into the
deep with a sullen sound. The prolonged "sloushai" of the sentinels
floated round the walls of the town, and when it was silent there rose
the yell of the jackals; and at last all again was still--every sound
mingling and losing itself in the rushing of the wind. How often had he
not sat awake on such nights with Verkhoffsky--and where is he now! And
who plunged him into the grave! And the murderer was now come to behead
the corpse of his former friend--to do sacrilege to his remains--like a
grave-robber to plunder the tomb--to dispute with the jackal his prey!

"Human feeling!" cried Ammalat, as he wiped the cold sweat from his
forehead, "why visitest thou a heart which has torn itself from
humanity? Away, away! Is it for me to fear to take off the head of a
dead man, whom I have robbed of life! For him 'twill be no loss--to me a
treasure. Dust is insensible!"

Ammalat struck a light with a trembling hand, blew up into a flame some
dry bourian, (a dry grass of South Russia,) and went with it to search
for the new-made grave. The loosened earth, and a large cross, pointed
out the last habitation of the colonel. He tore up the cross, and began
to dig up the mound with it; he broke through the arch of brickwork,
which had not yet become hardened, and finally tore the lead from the
coffin. The bourian, flaring up, threw an uncertain bloody-bluish tinge
on all around. Leaning over the dead, the murderer, paler than the
corpse itself, gazed unmovingly on his work; he forgot why he had
come--he turned away his head from the reek of rottenness--his gorge
rose within him when he saw the bloody-headed worms that crawled from
under the clothes. Interrupted in their loathsome work, they, scared by
the light, crept into a mass, and hid themselves beneath each other. At
length, steeling himself to the deed, he brandished his dagger, and each
time his erring hand missed its aim. Nor revenge, nor ambition, nor
love--in a word, not one of those passions which had urged him to the
frenzied crime, now encouraged him to the nameless horror. Turning away
his head, in a sort of insensibility he began to hew at the neck of
Verkhoffsky--at the fifth blow the head parted from the trunk.
Shuddering with disgust, he threw it into a bag which he had prepared,
and hastened from the grave. Hitherto he had remained master of himself;
but when, with his dreadful treasure, he was scrambling up, when the
stones crumbling noisily under his feet, and he, covered with sand, fell
backwards on Verkhoffsky's corpse, then presence of mind left the
sacrilegious. It seemed as if a flame had seized him, and spirits of
hell, dancing and grinning, had surrounded him. With a heavy groan he
tore himself away, crawled half senseless out of the suffocating grave,
and hurried off, dreading to look back. Leaping on his horse, he urged
it on, over rocks and ravines, and each bush that caught his dress
seemed to him the hand of a corpse; the cracking of every branch, the
shriek of every jackal, sounded like the cry of his twice-murdered
friend.

* * * * *

Wherever Ammalat passed, he encountered armed bands of Akoushlinetzes
and Avaretzes, Tchetchenetzes just arrived, and robbers of the Tartar
villages subject to Russia. They were all hurrying to the trysting-place
near the border-limits; while the Beks, Ouzdens, and petty princes, were
assembling at Khourzakh, for a council with Akhmet Khan, under the
leading, and by the invitation of whom, they were preparing to fall upon
Tarki. The present was the most favourable moment for their purpose:
there was abundance of corn in the ambars, (magazines,) hay in the
stacks, and the Russians, having taken hostages, had established
themselves in full security in winter-quarters. The news of
Verkhoffsky's murder had flown over all the hills, and powerfully
encouraged the mountaineers. Merrily they poured together from all
sides; every where were heard their songs of future battles and plunder;
and he for whom they were going to fight rode through them like a
runaway and a culprit, hiding from the light of the sun, and not daring
to look any one in the face. Every thing that happened, every thing that
he saw, now seemed like a suffocating dream--he dared not doubt, he
dared not believe it. On the evening of the third day he reached
Khounzakh.

Trembling with impatience, he leaped from his horse, worn out with
fatigue, and took from his saddle-straps the fatal bag. The front
chambers were filled with warriors; cavaliers in armour were walking up
and down, or lay on the carpets along the walls, conversing in whispers;
but their eyebrows were knit and cast down--their stern faces proved
that bad news had reached Khounzakh. Noukers ran hurriedly backwards and
forwards, and none questioned, none accompanied Ammalat, none paid any
attention to him. At the door of the Khan's bed-chamber sate
Zourkhai-Khan-Djingka, the natural son of Sultan Akhmet, weeping
bitterly. "What means this?" uneasily demanded Ammalat. "You, from whom
even in childhood tears could not be drawn--you weep?"

Zourkhai silently pointed to the door, and Ammalat, perplexed, crossed
the threshold. A heart-rending spectacle was presented before the
new-comer's eyes. In the middle of the room, on a bed, lay the Khan,
disfigured by a fierce illness; death invisible, but inevitable, hovered
over him, and his fading glance met it with dread. His breast heaved
high, and then sank heavily; his breath rattled in his throat, the veins
of his hands swelled, and then shrank again. In him was taking place the
last struggle of life with annihilation; the mainspring of existence had
already burst, but the wheels still moved with an uneven motion,
catching and entangling in each other. The spark of memory hardly
glimmered in him, but fitfully flashed like falling stars through the
darkness of night, which thickened over his soul, and reflected
themselves in his dying face. His wife and daughter were sobbing on
their knees by his bed-side; his eldest son, Noutsal, in silent despair
leaned at his feet, resting his head on his clenched fists. Several
women and noukers wept silently at a distance.

All this, however, neither astounded Ammalat nor recalled him to
himself, occupied as he was with one idea: he approached the Khan with a
firm step, and said to him aloud--"Hail, Khan! I have brought you a
present which will restore a dead man to life. Prepare the bridal. Here
is my purchase-money for Seltanetta; here is the head of Verkhoffsky!"
With these words he threw it at the Khan's feet.

The well-known voice aroused Sultan Akhmet from his last sleep: he
raised his head with difficulty to look at the present, and a shudder
ran like a wave over his body when he beheld the lifeless head. "May he
eat his own heart who treats a dying man with such dreadful food!" he
murmured, scarce intelligibly. "I must make my peace with my enemies,
and not----Ah, I burn, I burn! Give me water, water! Why have you made
me drink scalding naphtha? Ammalat, I curse you!" This effort exhausted
the last drops of life in the Khan; he fell a senseless corpse on the
pillow. The Khansha had looked with horror on the bloody and untimely
present of Ammalat; but when she saw that this had hastened her
husband's death, all her grief broke out in a torrent of anger.
"Messenger of hell!" she exclaimed, her eyes flashing, "rejoice; these
are your exploits; but for you, my husband would never have thought of
raising Avar against the Russians, and would have now been sitting in
health and quiet at home; but for you, visiting the Ouzdens, he fell
from a rock and was disabled; and you, blood-drinker!--instead of
consoling the sick with mild words, instead of making his peace with
Allah by prayers and alms--bring, as if to a cannibal, a dead man's
head; and whose head? Thy benefactor's, thy protector's, thy friend's!"

"Such was the Khan's will," in his turn replied Ammalat.

"Do not slander the dead; defile not his memory with superfluous blood!"
screamed the Khansha: "not content with having treacherously murdered a
man, you come with his head to woo my daughter at the deathbed of her
father, and you hoped to receive a recompense from man, when you
deserved the vengeance of God. Godless, soulless being! No! by the
graves of my ancestors, by the swords of my sons, I swear you shall
never be my son-in-law, my acquaintance, my guest! Away from my house,
traitor! I have sons, and you may murder while embracing them. I have a
daughter, whom you may bewitch and poison with your serpent looks. Go,
wander in the ravines of the mountains; teach the tigers to tear each
other; and dispute with the wolves for carcasses. Go, and know that my
door opens not to a fratricide!"

Ammalat stood like one struck by lightning: all that his conscience had
indistinctly whispered to him had been spoken out to him at once, and so
unexpectedly, so cruelly. He knew not where to turn his eyes: there lay
the head of Verkhoffsky with its accusing blood--there was the
threatening face of the Khan, printed with the seal of a death of
torture--there he met the stern glance of the Khansha.... The tearful
eyes of Seltanetta alone appeared like stars of joy through a rainy
cloud. To her he resolved to approach, saying timidly, "Seltanetta, for
you have I committed that for which I lose you. Destiny wills it: be it
so! One thing tell me--is it possible that you, too, have ceased to love
me--that you, too, hate me?"

The well-remembered voice of the beloved pierced her heart: Seltanetta
raised her eyes glistening with tears--eyes full of woe; but on seeing
Ammalat's dreadful face, spotted with blood, she covered them again with
her hand. She pointed with her finger at her father's corpse, at the
head of Verkhoffsky, and said, with firmness, "Farewell, Ammalat! I pity
thee; but I cannot be thine!" With these words she fell senseless on her
father's body.

All his native pride, all his blood, rushed to Ammalat's heart; his soul
fired with fury. "Is it thus I am received?" casting a scornful glance
at both the women; "is it thus that promises are fulfilled here? I am
glad that my eyes are opened. I was too simple when I prized the light
love of a fickle girl--too patient when I hearkened to the ravings of an
old woman. I see, that with Sultan Akhmet Khan have died the honour and
hospitality of his house!"

He left the room with a haughty step. He proudly gazed in the face of
the Ouzdens, grasping the hilt of his dagger as if challenging them to
combat. All, however, made way for him, but seemingly rather to avoid
him than from respect. No one saluted him, either by word or sign. He
went forth into the court-yard, called his noukers together, silently
mounted into the saddle, and slowly rode through the empty streets of
Khounzakh.

From the road he looked back for the last time upon the Khan's house,
which was blackening in the darkness, while the grated door shone with
lights. His heart was full of blood; his offended pride fixed in its
iron talons, while the useless crime, and the love henceforth despised
and hopeless, poured venom on the wounds. Grief, anger, and remorse
mingled in the glance which he threw on the harem where he first saw,
and where he lost, all earthly joy. "And you, and you, Seltanetta!" he
could utter no more. A mountain of lead lay on his breast; his
conscience already felt that dreadful hand which was stretched forth
against it. The past terrified him; the future made him tremble. Where
will he rest that head on which a price is set? What earth will give
repose to the bones of a traitor? Nor love, nor friendship, nor
happiness, will ever again be his care; but a life of misery, a
wanderer's bread....

Ammalat wished to weep, his eyes burned ... and, like the rich man
tormented in the fire, his heart prayed for one drop, one tear, to
quench his intolerable thirst.... He tried to weep, and could not.
Providence has denied this consolation to the guilty.

* * * * *

And where did the murderer of Verkhoffsky hide himself? Whither did he
drag his wretched existence? No one knew. In Daghestan it was reported
that he wandered among the Tchetchenetzes and Koi-Sou-Boulinetzes,
having lost his beauty, his health, and even his bravery. But who could
say this with certainty? Little by little the rumours about Ammalat died
away, though his villanous treachery is still fresh in the memory of
Russians and Mussulmans who dwell in Daghestan. Even now his name is
never pronounced without a reproach.

CHAPTER XIV.

Anapa, that manufactory of arms for the robbers of the mountains, that
bazar where are sold the tears, the blood, the sweat of Christian
slaves, that torch of rebellion to the Caucasus--Anapa, I say, was, in
1808, invested by the Russian armies, on the sea and on the mountain
side. The gun-boats, the bomb-vessels, and all the ships that could
approach the shore, were thundering against the fortifications. The land
army had passed the river which falls into the Black Sea, under the
northern wall of Anapa, and was posted in swampy ground around the whole
city. Then they constructed wooden trenches, hewing down, for that
purpose, the surrounding forest. Every night new works arose nearer and
nearer to the walls of the town. The interior of the houses flamed from
the effects of the shells; the outer walls fell under the cannon-balls.
But the Turkish garrison, reinforced by the mountaineers, fought
desperately, made fierce sorties, and replied to all proposals for
surrender by the shots of their artillery. Meanwhile the besiegers were
incessantly harassed by the Kabardinetz skirmishers, and the
foot-archers of Abazekhs, Shamsoukhs, Natoukhaitzes, and other wild
mountaineers of the shores of the Black Sea, assembled, like the
jackals, in hope of plunder and blood. Against them it was necessary to
erect redans; and this double work, performed under the fire of cannon
from the fortress and from the forest, on irregular and boggy ground,
delayed long the capture of the town.

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