The Dark Star

“He’s done a little more than express sympathy,” remarked the Princess; and she gave a humorous outline of Neeland’s part in the affair of the olive-wood box.

“Fancy!” exclaimed Captain Sengoun. “That impudent canaille! Yes; I heard at the Embassy what happened to that accursed box this morning. Of course it is a misfortune, but as for me, personally, I don’t care–”

“It doesn’t happen to concern you personally, Prince Erlik,” said Princess Naïa dryly.

“No,” he admitted, unabashed by the snub, “it does not touch me. Cavalry cannot operate on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Therefore, God be thanked, I shall be elsewhere when the snow boils.”

Rue tuned to Neeland:

“His one idea of diplomacy and war is a thousand Kuban Cossacks at full speed.”

“And that is an excellent idea, is it not, Kazatchka?” he said, smiling impudently at the Princess, who only laughed at the familiarity.

“I hope,” added Captain Sengoun, “that I may live to gallop through a few miles of diplomacy at full speed before they consign me to the Opolchina.” Turning to Neeland, “The reserve – the old man’s home, you know. God forbid!” And he drained his goblet and looked defiantly at Rue Carew.

“A Cossack is a Cossack,” said the Princess, “be he Terek or Kuban, Don or Astrachan, and they all know as much about diplomacy as Prince Erlik – or Izzet Bey’s nose… James, you are unusually silent, dear friend. Are you regretting those papers?”

“It’s a pity,” he said. But he had not been thinking of the lost papers; Rue Carew’s beauty preoccupied him. The girl was in black, which made her skin dazzling, and reddened the chestnut colour of her hair.

Her superb young figure revealed an unsuspected loveliness where the snowy symmetry of neck and shoulders and arms was delicately accented by the filmy black of her gown.

He had never seen such a beautiful girl; she seemed more wonderful, more strange, more aloof than ever. And this was what preoccupied and entirely engaged his mind, and troubled it, so that his smile had a tendency to become indefinite and his conversation mechanical at times.

Captain Sengoun drained one more of numerous goblets; gazed sentimentally at the Princess, then with equal sentiment at Rue Carew.

“As for me,” he said, with a carelessly happy gesture toward the infinite, “plans are plans, and if they’re stolen, tant pis! But there are always Tartars in Tartary and Turks in Turkey. And, while there are, there’s hope for a poor devil of a Cossack who wants to say a prayer in St. Sophia before he’s gathered to his ancestors.”

“Have any measures been taken at your Embassy to trace the plans?” asked Neeland of the Princess.

“Of course,” she said simply.

“Plans,” remarked Sengoun, “are not worth the tcherkeske of an honest Caucasian! A Khirgize pony knows more than any diplomat; and my magaika is better than both!”

“All the same,” said Rue Carew, “with those stolen plans in your Embassy, Prince Erlik, you might even gallop a sotnia of your Cossacks to the top of Achi-Baba.”

“By heaven! I’d like to try!” he exclaimed, his black eyes ablaze.

“There are dongas,” observed the Princess dryly.

“I know it. There are dongas every twenty yards; and Turkish gorse that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop! and hurrah for Achi-Baba!”

“Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to come back again and tell us all about it?”

“As for that,” he said with his full-throated, engaging laugh, “no need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes on its newly laundered cuffs?

“I know the European and Asiatic shores with their forts – Kilid Bahr, Chimilik, Kum Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we want of their plans, then–”

“Nothing, Prince Erlik!” said Rue, laughing. “It suffices that you be appointed adviser in general to his majesty the Czar.”

Sengoun laughed with all his might.

“And an excellent thing that would be, Miss Carew. What we need in Russia,” he added with a bow to the Princess, “are, first of all, more Kazatchkee, then myself to execute any commands with which my incomparable Princess might deign to honour me.”

“Then I command you to go and smoke cigarettes in the music-room and play some of your Cossack songs on the piano for Mr. Neeland until Miss Carew and I rejoin you,” said the Princess, rising.

At the door there was a moment of ceremony; then Sengoun, passing his arm through Neeland’s with boyish confidence that his quickly given friendship was welcome, sauntered off to the music-room where presently he was playing the piano and singing some of the entrancing songs of his own people in a voice that, cultivated, might have made a fortune for him:

“We are but horsemen,
And God is great.
We hunt on hill and fen
The fierce Kerait,
Naiman and Eighur,
Tartar and Khiounnou,
Leopard and Tiger
Flee at our view-halloo;
We are but horsemen
Cleansing the hill and fen
Where wild men hide —
Wild beasts abide,
Mongol and Baïaghod,
Turkoman, Taïdjigod,
Each in his den.
The skies are blue,
The plains are wide,
Over the fens the horsemen ride!”

Still echoing the wild air, and playing with both hands in spite of the lighted cigarette between his fingers, he glanced over his shoulder at Neeland:

“A very old, old song,” he explained, “made in the days of the great invasion when all the world was fighting anybody who would fight back. I made it into English. It’s quite nice, I think.”

His naïve pleasure in his own translation amused Neeland immensely, and he said that he considered it a fine piece of verse.

“Yes,” said Sengoun, “but you ought to hear a love song I made out of odd fragments I picked up here and there. I call it ‘Samarcand’; or rather ‘Samarcand Mahfouzeh,’ which means, ‘Samarcand the Well Guarded’:

“‘Outside my guarded door
Whose voice repeats my name?’
‘The voice thou hast heard before
Under the white moon’s flame!
And thy name is my song; and my song is ever the same!’

“‘How many warriors, dead,
Have sung the song you sing?
Some by an arrow were sped;
Some by a dagger’s sting.’
‘Like a bird in the night is my song – a bird on the wing!’

“‘Ahmed and Yucouf bled!
A dead king blocks my door!’
‘If thy halls and walls be red,