In the Track of the Troops, R. M. Ballantyne [best pdf ebook reader TXT] 📗

evidently fearing that the hitherto victorious stranger would again triumph.

For some moments the cautious walk-round continued, then there was a sudden exclamation of surprise from the crowd, for the blacksmith seized his adversary by the waist, and with a quick throw, caused him to turn almost a somersault in the air, and to come down on his back with stunning violence.

While the heavy fellow lay, as if slightly stunned, on the ground, Petroff stooped, again shook hands with him, and then lifting him high in the air, as though he had been but a boy, set him on his feet, and turned to resume his jacket, amid the enthusiastic cheers of the people.

Petroff’s jacket was handed to him by a pretty dark-eyed girl of about five years of age, who bore so strong a resemblance to the young woman who had brought the blacksmith on the scene, that I at once set them down as sisters. The child looked up in the champion’s face with such innocence that he could not resist the temptation to stoop and kiss her. Then, taking the little one’s hand, he pushed through the crowd and left the ring. I observed that the young woman also rose and went with them.

Feeling interested in these people. Lancey and I followed, and overtook them before they had quitted the field. I said in Russian:—

“Good-day, Petroff; you overthrew that fellow with greater ease than I had expected.”

The blacksmith gave me a look of pleased recognition as he returned my salutation.

“Well, sir,” he said, “it was not difficult. The man is strong enough, but does not understand the art well. You are an Englishman, I think.”

“I am,” said I, somewhat surprised as well by the question as by the superior manner and address of the man.

“It was a man from your land,” returned Petroff, with a grave earnest look, “who taught me to wrestle,—a man from Cornwall. He was a sailor—a stout fellow, and a good man. His vessel had been anchored off our village for some time, so that we saw a good deal of him. They had a passenger on board, who landed and went much about among the people. He was a German, and called himself a colporteur. He taught strange doctrines, and gave away many Bibles, printed in the Bulgarian tongue.”

“Ah,” said I, “no doubt he was an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society.”

“Perhaps so,” returned Petroff, with a somewhat perplexed look, “but he said nothing about that. His chief desire seemed to be to get us to listen to what he read out of his Bible. And some of us did listen, too. He gave one of the Bibles to my wife here, and she has been reading it pretty eagerly ever since.”

“What! this, then, is your wife?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, Marika is my wife, and Ivanka is my daughter,” replied Petroff, with a tender glance at the little girl that trotted by his side.

“Perhaps, Marika, your Cornish friend may have taught you to speak English,” said I, in my native tongue, turning to the woman.

Marika shook her pretty head, laughed, and blushed. She seemed to understand me, but would not consent to reply in English.

“The colporteur of whom you have spoken,” said I, turning to the blacksmith, and again speaking Russian, “did you a great service when he gave your wife the Word of God.”

Dobri Petroff assented, but a frown for a minute overspread his face. “Yes,” he said, “I admit that, but he also taught me to think, and it might have been better for me—for many of us in this land—if we did not think; if we could eat and sleep and work like the brutes that perish.”

I feared that I knew too well what the man referred to, and would gladly have dropped the subject, but could not do so without appearing rude.

“It is always well to think,” said I, “when we think rightly, that is, in accordance with the teachings of the Bible, about which we have just been speaking. Marika has read much of it to you, no doubt?”

“She has,” said the blacksmith, with a touch of sternness, “and among other things, she has read to me that ‘oppression driveth even a wise man mad.’ Am I to understand that as merely stating the fact, or justifying the madness?”

Without waiting for a reply to the question, he went on, hurriedly—

“You saw that Turk to-day, who pushed me aside as if I had been a dog? That showed you the spirit of the men in power here, but you little know their practices—”

“Petroff,” said I, interrupting, and looking at the man earnestly, “forgive me if I say that we had better not discuss the subject now. I have just arrived in your land, and know little about it yet. When I have seen and heard and thought much, I will be better able to understand you.”

Petroff admitted with ready grace that I was right, and thrusting his fingers through the wild clustering curls of his black hair, as if to let the air circle more freely about his head, he turned sharp round, and pointed to a cottage which stood at a short distance from the high-road, at the entrance to the village.

“That is our home, sir; we shall feel happy if you will enter it.”

I willingly complied, and turned with them into the by-path that led to it.

The cottage was a mere hut, long and low, one end of which constituted the forge, the other end, divided into three compartments, being the dwelling-house. Here I found the hand of Marika very evident, in the neatness and cleanliness of everything in and around the place. The owners were very poor, but there was sufficient for comfort and health. On a shelf in a corner lay the Bible which the family had received from the colporteur. It was the only book in the house, and evidently a cherished treasure.

In another corner, on a rudely-made but warm couch, lay a treasure of a different stamp—a boy, apparently about two years of age. As I looked at the curly black hair, the well-shaped nose, the firm, rosy lips, and the broad brow, I turned to Petroff with a smile, and said—

“I need not ask if that boy is yours.”

The man did not at once reply, but seized the child, which our entrance had awakened, and raised it high above his head.

“Do you hear that, little Dob? The gentleman knows who you are by your mother’s eyes.”

“Nay,” said I, with a laugh, “by its father’s nose. But now that you mention the eyes, I do recognise the mother’s plainly. How old is he?”

This was the first of a series of questions which opened the hearts of these people to me. On the strength of these jet-black eyes and the well-shaped nose, to say nothing of the colporteur and the Bible, Lancey and I struck up quite an intimate friendship, insomuch that at parting, little Dob gave me a familiar dab on the face, and Ivanka turned up her sweet little mouth to be kissed—quite readily and of her own accord. There is nothing on earth so captivating as a trustful child. My heart was knit to little Ivanka on the spot, and it was plain that little Dob and Lancey were mutually attracted.

I remained at that village several days longer than I had intended, in order to cultivate the acquaintance of the blacksmith’s family. During that time I saw a good deal of the other villagers, and found that Petroff was by no means a typical specimen. He was above his compeers in all respects, except in his own opinion; one of Nature’s gentlemen, in short, who are to be found, not numerously perhaps, but certainly, in almost every land, with unusual strength of intellect, and breadth of thought, and power of frame, and force of will, and nobility of aspiration. Such men in free countries, become leaders of the good and brave. In despotic lands they become either the deliverers of their country or the pests of society—the terror of rulers, the fomentors of national discord. Doubtless, in many cases, where right principles are brought to bear on them, they learn to submit, and, sometimes, become mitigators of the evils which they cannot cure.

Most of the other inhabitants of this village, some of whom were Mohammedans, and some Christians of the Greek Church, were sufficiently commonplace and uninteresting. Many of them appeared to be simply lazy and inert. Others were kindly enough, but stupid, and some were harsh, coarse, and cruel, very much as we find the peasantry in other parts of the world where they are ill-treated or uncared for.

While staying here I had occasion to go on shore one morning, and witnessed a somewhat remarkable scene in a café.

Lancey and I, having made a longer excursion than usual and the day being rather hot, resolved to refresh ourselves in a native coffee-house. On entering we found it already pretty well filled with Bulgarians, of whom a few were Moslems. They were apparently of the poorer class. Most of them sat on low stools, smoking chibouks—long pipes, with clay heads and amber mouth-pieces—and drinking coffee. The Christians were all engrossed, at the moment of our arrival, with a stranger, who from his appearance and the package of books which lay open at his side, I at once judged to be a colporteur. Dobri Petroff, I observed, was near him, and interested so deeply in what was going on, that he did not at first perceive us.

Having selected some New Testaments and Bibles from his pack, the colporteur handed them round for inspection. These, I found, were printed in the modern Bulgarian tongue. The people greatly admired the binding of the volumes, and began to evince considerable interest in what the colporteur said about them. At last he proposed to read, and as no objection was made, he read and commented on several passages. Although a German, he spoke Bulgarian fluently, and ere long had aroused considerable interest, for the people had little or no knowledge of the Bible; the only one to which they had access being that which lay on the pulpit of the Greek Church of the village, and which, being written in the ancient Slavic language, was incomprehensible by them.

The priests in the Greek Church there are generally uneducated men, and their intoned services and “unknown tongue” do not avail much in the way of enlightenment. The schoolmasters, I was told by those who had good opportunity of judging, are much better educated than the priests. I observed that one of these, who had on a former visit been pointed out to me by my friend Dobri, sat not far from the colporteur smoking his chibouk with a grave critical expression of countenance.

At last the colporteur turned to the 115th Psalm, and I now began to perceive that the man had a purpose, and was gradually leading the people on.

It is well known that the Greek Church, although destitute of images in its religious buildings, accords the same reverence, or homage, to pictures which the Romish Church does to the former. At first, as the colporteur read, the people listened with grave attention; but when he came to the verses that describe the idols of the heathen as being made of, “silver and gold, the work of men’s hands,” with mouths that could not speak, and eyes that could not see, and ears that could not hear, several of the more earnest listeners began to frown, and it was evident that they regarded the language of the colporteur’s book as applicable to their sacred pictures, and resented the implied censure. When he came to the eighth verse, and read, “They that make them are like unto them, so is every one that trusteth in them,” there were indignant murmurs; for these untutored peasants, whatever their church might teach about such subtleties as worshipping God through pictures, accepted