Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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"Where am I?" he repeated, almost despairingly; for, as Schiller sings in his "Song of the Bell,"—

"Man fears the kingly lion's tread;

Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;

And still the dreadliest of the dread

Is man himself in error!"

Though clad in the uniform of the Russian Regiment of Smolensko, which was raised in the famous duchy of that name, the traveller was neither Muscovite nor Calmuck, Cossack nor Tartar, but a cool, wary, and determined young Briton, one of the many Scottish officers whom misfortune or ambition had drawn into the Russian service, both by sea and land, from the time of Peter the Great down to the beginning of the present century; for many Scottish officers served in the Russian fleet with Admiral Greig at the famous bombardment of Varna: and it was such volunteers as these that first taught the barbarous hordes of the growing empire the true science of war and the necessity for discipline.

The rider's green uniform, faced with scarlet velvet and richly laced with gold, was covered by a thick grey pelisse (like our present patrol-jackets), trimmed with black wolf's fur: he wore a scarlet forage cap with a square top, long boots that came above the knee, and a Turkish sabre that had once armed a pasha of more tails than one.