At Dantzig the train arrived in due time, and the doors were opened by the conductors. I was found with "the murdered man;" my recent cries were attributed to him; the broken windows to his dying struggle, for my hands were cut and covered with blood! The Prussian gallows threatened me on one hand and the Russian knout upon the other. I was a poor unfriended foreigner, in a land of spies, suspicion, and police agents; and in my own defence had not one word to urge, for I was ignorant of the language. But fortunately next day, a letter was found on the person of the deceased, who proved to be a French artist, announcing his intention of destroying himself, and adding, that "when he had no longer a sou, it was thus a Frenchman should die--Vive la France! Vive le diable!"
This relieved me, and explained the whole affair; but the Prussian gens-d'armes kept my purse, as they said, to pay "all contingencies;" and had not the captain of a large French ship taken pity upon me, and brought me and my horse to London--the capital of Europe--I must have begged for bread in the streets of Dantzig, and had to sell my beloved Zupi to save the noble animal from starvation.
Finding myself in the great city of London, I was likely to be in greater distress than when in the vast forest of Lithuania; for in London the whole population live in an atmosphere of snares, suspicion, and mistrust, every man viewing his neighbour as one who has a design upon him. Again I was starving, for the little sum with which the French captain supplied me was spent upon Zupi, by whose side I always slept at night in an old cart-shed. But remembering that by birth and habit I was a soldier, I applied to the officers of the Household Brigade; some of these smiled, and shook their heads doubtfully, until Sir Henry Slingsby laid before them my commission in the Tenginski Hussars; it was fringed with silver, and signed by the Emperor Nicholas Paulovitch. Then they had a fellow feeling for me, and treated me with a kindness, the memory of which fills my soul with gratitude; for never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget it, or omit to pray for the good and brave Ingleez.
Such was the story of the Circassian captain, and it occupied the greater part of the time during which the San Lucar packet steamed along the south-west coast of Andalusia, passing Cape Plata, and entering the Straits of Gibraltar, had rounded the promontory which is crowned by towers and ramparts of Tarifa, after which a run of seventeen miles brought us into the harbour of the great rock, where the babble of Spaniards, Moors, Italians, French, and Gitanas was ringing in our ears again, as we landed with our horses on the quay.