f course it would be useless to deny the existence of the delight in
battle which affects some natures, but I am perfectly sure that it does
not come as the result of standing still to be shot at. I have seen
some extraordinary examples of cool courage and at least one of perfect
panic, but the circumstances in which I saw the last, disposed me to
understand and to sympathise with it. We were quartered at Tashkesen
shortly after our enforced retreat from Plevna. The village in which
we lived was two or three miles from the actual front of war, and on
a certain foggy morning I set out with a little hill pony to visit the
fortifications. I may as well make one bite at the whole story, and to
do this I must go back to the time when I was at Vienna and had just
discovered that it was impossible to make my way to Schumla by the
Danube. At the Englischer Hof Hotel in that city I met a gentleman who
had for years been engaged in a military survey of the Balkan country.
He had been under some sort of contract with the Turkish Government, but
on the very eve of the campaign, the authorities had refused to pay him
a sum of L12,000 which he reckoned to be due to him for his labours and
expenses, and at considerable risk and difficulty he had contrived
to smuggle his map out of Constantinople. He was on his way to St
Petersburg with it and eventually disposed of it to the Russian
Government. Without it the Russian army would never have been able ta
force the passage of the Balkans and I always traced the defeat of
the Turks to that poor economy of L12,000. The map was the most
extraordinary thing of its kind I have ever seen. It consisted of a
great number of thin wooden slabs of about a foot square on which were
modelled in wax all the mountains and passes of the Balkan range, built
exactly to scale and showing every road and bypath.

Now at Tashkesen the Russians were in possession of this map, with the
result that they were able to adjust their guns to the precise range of
positions which were out of sight. The road by which I travelled on that
foggy morning was being swept by shell, the evident purpose being to
prevent provisions and supplies from being carried along it to the
troops in front. Probably from want of ammunition, the cannonade had
been suspended from seven o'clock in the morning until about eleven, and
I took advantage of this lull to attempt my visit to the fortifications.
I was about half-way up the hill when a s