The Secret Dispatch: The Adventures of Captain Balgonie
(eBook)

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    [year] => 2021
    [artist] => James Grant
    [fiction] => 1
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    [titleId] => 14247467
    [isbn] => 9781465655776
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => The Secret Dispatch
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    [pages] => 213
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    [synopsis] => Though clad in the uniform of the Russian Regiment of Smolensko, which was raised in the famous duchy of that name, the traveler 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. "Swim the river I must," he muttered, after having traversed the valley in vain, looking for a bridge, boat, or raft of timber; "but, egad, death may be the penalty. Well," he added, with a gleam of ire in his dark grey eyes and a bitter smile on his lip, "there was a time, perhaps, when I little thought that I, Charlie Balgonie, would find a nameless grave in this land of timber, hemp, and salted hides, where caviare is a luxury, train-oil a liqueur, and the air of Siberia, deemed healthy for all who have any absurd, ideas of political freedom, or are silly enough to imagine, that a man may be the lord of his own, proper person." To add to his troubles and discomfort, though the month was April, usually the most serene of the year in Russia-snow-flakes were beginning to fall, rendering yet greater the gloom of the gathering night. "I was to have found a bridge here. Can that Livonian villain, Podatchkine, have deluded, and then left me to my fate?" He knew that in his rear, the way by which he had come, lay half-frozen morasses, heathy wastes, and forests of spruce, larch, and silver-leaved firs-vast natural magazines for supplying all Europe with masts and spars-the haunt of the wolf and bear; he knew that to linger or to return were worse than to advance, and that he must cross the stream and seek quarters and guidance at the château, the name of which was yet, unknown to him. This was, if possible, the worst season for passing the Louga, which is always deepest and most navigable in spring. It rises in the district of Novgorod; and, after traversing a country full of vast forests for more than 180-miles, falls into the Gulf of Finland. Balgonie buttoned tightly his holster-flaps, hooked up his sabre, assured himself that an important dispatch with which he, was entrusted was safe in an inner pocket, and prepared seriously for the perilous task of swimming his horse across the stream. Again, he looked anxiously at the château, the abode evidently of some wealthy noble or boyar. Its outline had almost disappeared in the increasing obscurity; the last faint gleams of the west, had faded away on the onion-shaped roofs of its turrets, and a central dome of polished copper, which was cut into facets like the outside of a pineapple (for there is much of the Oriental in the old Russian architecture); but lights were beginning to sparkle, cheerfully through its double-sashed windows, upon the feathery and the funeral-like foliage of the solemn pine woods.
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14247467
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    [subtitle] => The Adventures of Captain Balgonie
    [publisher] => Library of Alexandria
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