And foot by foot staunch Mehemit Ali
Was driven along the Lojan valley,
Till he sat his battered forces down
Just northward of the little town,
And waited on war's destiny.
War's destiny came, and line by line
His forces broke and fled.
And for three days in Orkhanie town
The arabas went up and down
With loads of dying and dead;
Till at last in a rush of panic fear,
The hardest bitten warriors there
Turn'd with the cowardly Bazouk
And the vile Tchircasse and forsook
The final fort, in headlong flight,
For near Kamirli's sheltering height;
While through the darkness of the night
The cannon belched their hate
Against the flying crowd; and far
And near the soldiers of the Tsar
Pour'd onward towards the spoil of war
In haste precipitate.
And the little adventurer sat in a shed
With one woman dying, and one woman dead.
Nothing he knew of the late defeat,
Nothing of Mehemit's enforced retreat;
For he spoke no word of the Turkish tongue,
And had seen no Englishman all day long.
So he sat there, calm, with a flask of rum,
And a cigarette 'twixt finger and thumb,
Tranquilly smoking, and watching the smoke,
And probably hatching some stupid joke,
When in at the door, without a word,
Burst a Circassian, hand on sword.
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