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Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 In the morning, under easy sail and half steam, the ship was off
Balaclava, where I saw the old Genoese fort that commands its
entrance, the white houses of the Arnaouts shaded by tall poplars,
and the sea breaking in foam upon its marble bluffs; and there the
captain kindly put me ashore in the first boat that left the ship.

It was not until long after the Crimean war, that by the merest
chance, through an exchanged prisoner--a private of our 68th Foot--
when having occasion to employ him as a commissionnaire in
London, I learned what the fate of Guilfoyle was. En route to
Kharkoff, he was run through the heart and killed by the lance of a
Cossack of his escort, who alleged that he was attempting to escape;
but my informant more shrewdly suspected that it was to obtain
quiet possession of his ring--the paste diamond which had figured so
often in his adventures, real and fictitious.

CHAPTER LII.--BEFORE SEBASTOPOL STILL.

On the 28th of March, I found myself once more in my old tent,

and seeking hard to keep myself warm at the impromptu stove,
constructed by my faithful old servant, poor Jack Evans. I was
received with astonishment, and, I am pleased to say, with genuine
satisfaction by the regiment, even by those who had flattered
themselves that they had gained promotion by my supposed demise.
I was welcomed by all, from the Lieutenant-colonel down to little
Dicky Roll, the junior drummer, and for the first day my tent was
besieged by old friends.
 I had come back among them as from the dead; but more than
one man, whose name figured in the lists as missing, turned up in a
similar fashion during the war. My baggage had all been sent to
Balaclava, the railway to which was now partly in operation; my
letters and papers had been carefully sealed up in black wax by
Philip Caradoc, and with other private and personal mementos of
me, packed for transmission to Sir Madoc Lloyd, as my chief friend of
whom he knew. Many came, I have said, to welcome me; but I
missed many a familiar face, especially from among my own
company, as the Fusileers had more than once been severely
engaged in the trenches.

Caradoc had been wounded in the left hand by a rifle-ball; Charley

Gywnne greeted me with his head in bandages, the result of a
Cossack sabre-cut; Dynely, the adjutant, had also been wounded; so
had Mostyn, of the Rifles, and Tom Clavell, of the 19th, when
passing through "the Valley of Death." Sergeant Rhuddlan, of my
company, had just rejoined, after having a ball in the chest (even
Carneydd Llewellyn had lost a horn): all who came to see me had
something to tell of dangers dared and sufferings undergone. All
were in uniforms that were worn to rags; but all were hearty as
crickets, though sick of the protracted siege, and longing to carry
Sebastopol with the cold steel.

"How odd, my dear old fellow, that we should all think you
drowned, and might have been wearing crape on our sleeves, but for
the lack thereof in camp, and the fact that mourning has gone out of
fashion since death is so common among us; while all the time you
have been mewed up (by the Cossacks in the Baidar Valley) within
some forty miles of us; and so stupidly, too!" said Caradoc, as we sat
late in the night over our grog and tobacco in his hut.

"Not so stupidly, after all," I replied, while freely assisting myself

to his cavendish.

"How?"
 "There was such a girl there, Phil!" I added, with a sigh.

"Oho! where?"

"At Yalta."

"Woronzow's palace, or château?"

"Yes; but why wink so knowingly?"

"So, after all, you found there was balm in Gilead?" said he,
laughing. "You must admit then, if she impressed you so much, that
all your bitter regrets about a certain newspaper paragraph were a
little overdone, and that I was a wise prophet? And what was this
girl--Russian, Tartar, Greek, a Karaite Jewess, or what?"

"A pure Russian."

"Handsome?"

"Beyond any I have ever seen, beautiful!"

"Whew! even beyond la belle--"

"There, don't mention her at present, please," said I, with a little

irritation, which only made him laugh the more.

"If you were love-making at Yalta, with three lance-prods in you,

there was no malingering anyhow."

"I should think not."

"And so she was engaged to be married to that Russian bear,

Tolstoff," he added, after I had told him the whole of my affair with
Valerie.

"Yes," said I, with an unmistakable sigh.

 "I think we are both destined to live and die bachelors," he
resumed, in a bantering way; for though Phil had in these matters
undergone, at Craigaderyn and elsewhere, "the baptism of fire"
himself, he was not the less inclined to laugh at me; for of all
sorrows, those of love alone excite the risible propensities.

"And so, Phil, the world's a kaleidoscope--always shifting."

"Not always couleur de rose, though?"

"And I am here again!"

"Thank God!" said he, as we again shook hands, "Faith, Harry, you
must have as many lives as a cat, and so you may well have as
many loves as Don Juan; but, entre nous, and excuse me, she seems
to have been a bit of a flirt, your charming Valerie."

"How--why do you think so?"

"From all you have told me; moreover every woman to be

attractive, should be a little so," replied Caradoc, curling his heavy
brown moustache.

"I don't think she was; indeed, I am certain she was not. But if
this be true, how then about Miss Lloyd; and she is attractive
enough?"

At the tenor of this retort Phil's face flushed from his Crimean
beard to his temples.

"There you are wrong," said he, with the slightest asperity
possible; "she has not in her character a grain of coquetry, or of that
which Horace calls 'the art that is not to be taught by art.' She is a
pure-minded and warm-hearted English girl, and is as perfect as all
those wives and daughters of England, who figure in the volumes of
Mrs. Ellis; and in saying this I am genuine, for I feel that I am
praising some other fellow's bride--not mine, God help me!" he
added, with much of real feeling.

"You have heard nothing of the Lloyds since I left you?"

"Nothing."

"Well, take courage, Phil; we may be at Craigaderyn one day yet,"

said I; and he, as if ashamed of his momentary sentimental
outburst, exclaimed, with a laugh,

"By Jove, now that I have heard all your amours and amourettes,
they surpass even those of Hugh Price."

"Poor Hugh! his lieutenancy is filled up, I suppose?"

"Yes--as another week would have seen your company, for we

could not conceive that you were a prisoner at Yalta. Awkward that
would have been."

"Deucedly so."

"But now you must console yourself, old fellow, by seeing what
Madame la Colonelle Tolstoff----"

"Don't call her by that name, Phil--I hate to hear it!"

"By what, then?"

"Valerie--anything but the other."

"Then what, as Mrs. Henry Hardinge, she might become, if all this
author (whose book I have been reading) says of the Russian ladies
be true." And drawing from his pocket a small volume, he gave me
the following paragraph to read, and I own it consoled me--a little:--

"The domestic virtues are little known or cultivated in Russia, and

marriage is a mere matter of convenience. There is little of romance
in the character or conduct of the Russian lady. Intrigue and
sensuality, rather than sentiment or passion, guide her in her
amours, and these in after-life are followed by other inclinations. She
becomes a greedy gamester, and a great gourmande, gross in
person, masculine in views, a shrewd observer of events, an oracle
at court, and a tyrant over her dependents. There are, of course,
exceptions to this rule."

"Ah, Valerie would be one of these!"

"Perhaps--but as likely not," said Phil; "and on the whole, if this

traveller Maxwell is right, I have reason to congratulate you on your
escape. But we must turn in now, as we relieve the trenches an hour
before daybreak to-morrow; and by a recent order every man,
without distinction, carries one round shot to the front, so a constant
supply is kept up for the batteries."

Soon after this, on the 2nd of April, a working party of ours

suffered severely in the trenches, and Major Bell, who commanded,
was thanked in general orders for his distinguished conduct on that
occasion. As yet it seemed to me that no very apparent progress had
been made with the siege. The cold was still intense. Mustard froze
the moment it was made, and half-and-half grog nearly did so, too.
The hospital tents and huts were filled with emaciated patients
suffering under the many diseases incident to camp life; and the
terrible hospital at Scutari was so full, that though the deaths there
averaged fifty daily in February, our last batch of wounded had to be
kept on board-ship.

Phil and I burned charcoal in our hut, using old tin mess-kettles
with holes punched in them. We, like all the officers, wore long
Crimean boots; but our poor soldiers had only their wretched ankle
bluchers, which afforded them no protection when the snow was
heavy, or when in thaws the mud became literally knee-deep; and
they suffered so much, that in more than one instance privates
dropped down dead without a wound after leaving the trenches. So
great were the disasters of one regiment--the 63rd, I think--that only
seven privates and four officers were able to march to Balaclava on
the 1st of February; by the 12th the effective strength of the brigade
of Guards was returned at 350 men; and all corps--the Highland,
perhaps, excepted--were in a similarly dilapidated state.

The camp was ever full of conflicting rumours concerning

combined assaults, expected sorties, the probabilities of peace, or a
continuance of the war; alleged treasons among certain French
officers, who were at one time alleged to have given the Russians
plans of their own batteries; that Menschikoff was dead from a
wound, and also Yermiloff the admiral; that General Tolstoff was now
in command of the left towards Inkermann. (If so, was Valerie now
in Sebastopol? How I longed for the united attack--the storm and
capture that might enable me to see her once again!) And amid all
these varied rumours there came one--carried swiftly by horsemen
through Bucharest and Varna--which reached us on the 7th of April,
to the effect that Nicholas the mighty Czar of All the Russias, had
gone to his last account; and I do not think it was a demise we
mourned much. We sent intelligence of it by a flag of truce to the
Russians; but they received it with scorn, as a "weak invention of the
enemy."

And now the snow began to wear away; the clouds that floated
over the blue Euxine and the green spires of Sebastopol became
light and fleecy; the young grass began to sprout, and the wild
hyacinths, the purple crocuses, and tender snowdrops, the violet and
the primrose, were blooming in the Valley of Death, and on the fresh
mould that marked where the graves of our comrades lay.

CHAPTER LIII.--NEWS FROM CRAIGADERYN.

 It was impossible for me not to feel lingering in my heart a deep
and tender interest for Valerie. She had not deceived or ill-used me;
we had simply been separated by the force of circumstances; by her
previous troth to Tolstoff, whom I flattered myself she could not love,
even if she respected or esteemed him.

That they were married by this time I could scarcely doubt, as she
had assured me that she was on "the very eve" of her nuptials (one
of those "marriages of convenience," according to Caradoc's book);
and if he held a command so high in Sebastopol, there was every
reason to conclude she must be with him. In the event of a general
assault, I was fully resolved to send my card to headquarters as a
volunteer for the storming column, though I knew right well that I
dare not allow myself to fall alive, into his hands, at all events; thus
the whole situation gave me an additional and more personal
interest in the fall and capture of that place than, perhaps, inspired
any other man in the whole allied army. What if Tolstoff should be
killed? This surmise opened up a wide field for speculation.

Any of those balls that were incessantly poured against the city
might send that amiable commander to kingdom come, and if Valerie
were left a widow--well, I did not somehow like to think of her as a
widow, Tolstoff's especially, yet I was exasperated to think of her, so
brilliant, so gentle, and so highly cultured, as the wife of one so
coarse and even brutal in bearing, and if he did happen to stand in
the way of a bullet, why should he not be killed as well as another;
and so I reasoned, so true it is, that "with all our veneering and
French polish, the tiger is only half dead in any of us."

If I were again unluckily sent with a flag of truce into Sebastopol,

on any mission such as the burial of the dead and removal of the
wounded, or so forth, it would, I knew, be certainly violated by
Tolstoff, and myself be made prisoner for the affairs at Yalta. Then if
such a duty were again offered me, on what plea could I, with
honour, decline it? I could but devoutly hope that no such
contingency might happen for me again.

Times there were when, brooding over the past, and recalling the
strange magnetism of the smile of Valerie, and in the touch of her
hand, the contour of her face, her wonderful hair, and pleading
winning dark eyes, there came into my heart the tiger feeling
referred to, the jealousy that makes men feel mad, wild, fit for
homicide or anything; and as hourly "human lives were lavished
everywhere, as the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves," I had--
heroics apart--a terrible longing to have my left hand upon the throat
of Tolstoff, with her Majesty's Sheffield regulation blade in the other,
to help him on his way to a better world.

In these, or similar visions and surmises, I ceased to indulge when

with Caradoc, as he was wont to quiz me, and say that if I got a wife
out of Sebastopol, I should be the only man who gained anything by
the war, and even my gain might be a loss; that, like himself, I had
twice burned my fingers at the torch of Hymen, and that I should
laugh at the Russian episode or loving interlude, as he called it, as
there were girls in England whose shoe-strings he was sure she was
not fit to tie. Though she had rightly told me that my passion was
but a passing fancy, she knew not that it was one fed by revenge
and disappointment.

"Lady Estelle may perhaps have destroyed your faith in women,"

added Phil, "but any way she has not destroyed mine."

"Have you still the locket with the likeness of Winifred Lloyd?" said
I.

"Yes--God bless her--she left it with me," he replied, with a

kindling eye. How true Phil was to her! and yet she knew it not, and
as far as we knew, recked but little of the faith he bore her.

On a Saturday night--the night of that 21st of April, on which we

captured the rifle-pits--as we sat in our hut talking over the affair,
weary with toil of that incessant firing to which the cannonading at
Shoeburyness is a joke, Phil said,

"Let us drink 'sweethearts and wives,' as we used to do in the

transport."

"Agreed," said I; and as we clinked our glasses together and

exchanged glances, I knew that his thoughts went back to
Craigaderyn, even as mine recurred to that moonlight night on the
terrace at Yalta.

"You remained with the burial party," said he, after a pause.

"Yes, and I saw something which convinced me that the fewer

tender ties we fighting men have, the better for our own peace. An
officer of the 19th lay among the dead, a man past forty apparently.
A paper was peeping from the breast of his coat; I pulled it out, and
it proved to be a letter, received perhaps that morning--a letter from
his wife, thrust hastily into his breast, as we marched to the front. A
little golden curl was in it, and there was written in a child's hand,
'Cecil's love to dearest papa.' I must own that the incident, at such a
time and place, affected me; so I replaced the letter in the poor
fellow's breast, and we buried it with him. So papa lies in a rifle-pit,
with mamma's letter and little Cecil's lock of hair; but, after all, king
Death did not get much of him--the poor man had been nearly torn
to pieces by a cannon shot."

"I saw you in advance of the whole line of skirmishers to-day,

Harry, far beyond the zigzags."

"I was actually at the foot of the glacis."

"The glacis--was not that madness?" exclaimed Phil.

"The truth is, I did so neither through enthusiastic courage nor in

a spirit of bravado. I was only anxious to see if from behind the sap-
roller that protected me, my field-glass could enable me to detect
among the gray-coated figures at the embrasures, the tall person
and grim visage of old Tolstoff."

"By Jove, I thought as much!"

"But I looked in vain, and retired in crab-fashion, the bullets falling

in a shower about me the while."

At that moment a knock rung on the door of the hut, and

Sergeant Rhuddlan, who acted as our regimental postman, handed a
small packet to me.

"The second battalion of the Scots Royals, the 48th, and the 72nd
Highlanders have just come in, sir, from Balaclava, and have brought
a mail with them," said he, in explanation; and while he was
speaking, we heard the sound of drums and bagpipes, half drowned
by cheers in the dark, as those in camp welcomed the new arrivals
from home, and helped to get them tented and hutted.

"From Craigaderyn!" said I, on seeing the seal--Sir Madoc's

antique oval--with the lion's head erased, as the heralds have it.

I had written instantly to the kind old man on my return to camp,

and this proved to be the answer by the first mail. On opening the
packet I found a letter, and a cigar-case beautifully worked in beads
of the regimental colours, red, blue, and gold, with my initials on one
side, and those of Winifred Lloyd on the other. Poor Phil Caradoc
looked wistfully at the work her delicate hands had so evidently
wrought--so wistfully that, but for the ungallantry of the proceeding,
I should have presented the case to him. However, he had the
simple gratification of holding it, while I read the letter of Sir Madoc,
and did so aloud, as being of equal interest to us both. It was full of
such warm expressions of joy for my safety and of regard for me
personally, that I own they moved me; but some passages proved a
little mysterious and perplexing.
 "Need I repeat to you, my dear Harry, how the receipt of your
letter caused every heart in the Court to rejoice--that of Winny
especially? She is more impressionable than Dora, less volatile, and I
have now learned why the poor girl refused Sir Watkins, and, as I
understand, another."

"That is me," said Phil, parenthetically.

"But of that unexpected refusal of Sir Watkins Vaughan nothing

can be said here."

"What on earth can he mean!" said I, looking up; "perhaps she

has some lingering compunction about you, Phil."

"If so, she might have sent the cigar-case to me--or something
else; just to square matters, as it were."

Remembering my old suspicions and fears--they were fears then--

as I drove away from Craigaderyn for Chester, I read the letter in
haste, and with dread of what it might contain or reveal; as I would
not for worlds have inflicted a mortification, however slight, on my
dear friend Caradoc, who gnawed the ends of his moustache at the
following:

"Young Sir Watkins had been most attentive to Winny during the
past season in town--that gay London season, which,
notwithstanding the war, was quite as brilliant as usual; when every
one had come back from the Scotch moors, from Ben Nevis, Mont
Blanc, the Matterhorn, and everywhere else that the roving
Englishman is wont to frequent, to kill game, or time, or himself, as
it sometimes happens. But Winny won't listen to him, and I think he
is turning his attention to Dora, though whether or not the girl--who
has another adorer, in the shape of a long-legged Plunger with
parted hair and a lisp--only laughs at him, I can't make out.

"Tell Caradoc, Gwynne, and other true-hearted Cymri in the Welsh

Fusileers, that when in London I attended more than one meeting,
inaugurating a movement to secure for Wales judges and counsel
who shall speak Welsh, and Welsh only. The meetings were failures,
and the d--d Sassenachs only laughed at us; but from such injustice,
Gwared ni Argylywd daionus![5] say I.

"And so poor Hugh Price of yours is gone. A good-hearted fellow,

who could do anything, from crossing the stiffest hunting country to
making a champagne cup, singing a love song or mixing a salad--one
of the old line of the Rhys of Geeler in Denbighshire. My God, how
many other fine fellows lie in that hecatomb in the Valley of
Inkermann! Sebastopol seems to be left quite open on one side, so
that the Russians may pour in stores and fresh troops, and go and
come at their pleasure? It is pleasant for tax-payers at home and the
troops abroad to think that things are so arranged in Downing-street,
by my Lords Aberdeen, Aberconway, and suchlike Whig incapables
and incurables.

"I fear your regimental dinner would be a scanty one on St.

David's-days." (On that day I had dined with Valerie, and forgot all
about the yearly festival of the Fusileers!) "I thought of it and of you
all--the more so, perhaps, that I had just seen the old colours of the
Royal Welsh in St. Peter's Church at Carmarthen."

The old baronet, after a few Welsh words, of which I could make
nothing, rambled away into such subjects as mangold-wurzels and
subsoil, scab-and-foot rot, and food for pheasants, all of which I
skipped; ditto about the close of the hunting-season, which he and
Sir Watkins--Winny's admirer--had shared together; and how the rain
had deluged Salop, throwing the scent breast-high, so that in many a
run the fox and the hounds had it all to themselves, and that
following them was as bad as going all round the Wrekin to
Shrewsbury, mere brooks having become more than saddle-girth
deep; moreover, the mischievous, execrable, and pestilent wire
fences were playing the devil with the noble old sport of fox-hunting;
then, with a few more expressions of regard, and a hint about Coutts
& Co., if I wanted cash, his characteristic letter closed, and just when
folding it, I detected Master Phil Caradoc surreptitiously placing
Winny's cigar case very near his bushy moustache--about to kiss it,
in fact. He grew very red, and looked a little provoked.

"So that is all Sir Madoc's news?" said he.

"All--a dear old fellow."

"To-morrow is Sunday, when we shall have the chaplain at the

drum-head, and be confessing that we have done those things which
we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we
ought to have done, while the whistling dicks are bursting and the
shot booming, as the Ruskies seek to have a quiet shy at our hollow
square, and the Naval Brigade, with their long 'Lancasters,' are
making, as usual, the devil's own row against the Redan--so till then,
adieu!" he added, adopting a bantering tone, as men will at times,
when ashamed of having exhibited any emotion or weakness.

Not long after this, with my company, I had to escort to Balaclava,

and to guard for some days, till embarked, some Russian prisoners,
who had been taken by the Turks in an affair between Kamara and
the Tchernaya, and who were afterwards transmitted to Lewes in
Sussex; and I had a little opportunity afforded me for studying their
character and composition; and brave though these men
undoubtedly were, I felt something of pity and contempt for them;
nor was I mistaken, though Prince Dolgorouki maintains, in La Vérité
sur la Russie, that a Muscovite alone can write on a Russian subject.
A British soldier never forgets that he is a citizen and a free-born
man; but to the Russian these terms are as untranslatable as that of
slave into the Celtic.

In the empire, when fresh levies are wanted, the chief of each
village makes a selection; the wretched serfs have then one side of
the head shaved, to prevent desertion, and, farther still, are
manacled and marched like felons to the headquarters of their
regiment. There they are stripped, bathed--rather a necessary
ceremony--and deprived of all they may possess, save the brass
crosses and medals which are chained round their neck--the holy
amulet of the Russian soldier, and spared to him as the only
consolation of his miserable existence. He is docile, submissive, and
gallant, but supple, subservient, and cunning, though his gallantry
and courage are the result of dull insensibility, tinged with ferocity
rather than moral force.

The recruit bemoans the loss of his beard, and carefully preserves
it that it may be buried with him, as an offering to St. Nicholas, who
would not admit him into heaven without it. Once enrolled--we
cannot say enlisted--he makes a solemn vow never to desert the
colours of his regiment, each of which has its own artel or treasury,
its own chaplain, sacred banners, and relics. The pay of these
warriors averages about a halfpenny English per diem. Their food is
of the most wretched description, and it is known that when the
troops of Suwarrow served in the memorable campaign of Italy, they
devoured with keen relish the soap and candles wherever they went;
but many of the Russian battalions, and even the Cossack corps,
have vocal companies that sing on the march, or at a halt, where
they form themselves into a circle, in the centre of which stands the
principal singer or leader. And thus I heard some of these poor
fellows sing, when I halted them outside Balaclava, at a place where,
as I remember, there lay a solitary grave--that probably of a
Frenchman, as it was marked by a cross, had a wreath of
immortelles upon it, and was inscribed--alas for the superstitions of
the poor human heart!--"the last tribute of love."

The snow and the rain had frittered it nearly away.

Among my prisoners were four officers--dandies who actually

wore glazed boots, and were vain of their little hands and feet. I was
more than usually attentive to them for the sake of Valerie, and as
they certainly seemed--whatever the rank and file might be--
thorough gentlemen. One knew Volhonski, and all seemed to know
Valerie, and had probably danced--perhaps flirted--with her, for they
had met at balls in St. Petersburg. All knew Tolstoff, and laughed at
him; but none could tell me whether or not she and that northern
bear were as yet "one flesh," or married in facie ecclesia.
 CHAPTER LIV.--THE ASSAULT.

It is the morning of Saturday, the 8th September, 1855. For a year

now the allied forces have been before Sebastopol; but the flag of
St. Andrew is still flying in defiance upon its forts, and on this
memorable morning the columns of attack are forming for the great
assault. In the preceding June, amid the din of the ceaseless
cannonade, poor Lord Raglan had passed away to a quieter world;
and the picturesque Sardinians, with their green uniforms, billycock
hats, and Bersaglieri plumes--each private a species of Fra Diavolo--
had come to aid us in the reduction of this place, the Gibraltar of the
Euxine.

It was a cheerless morning. From the sea, a biting wind swept

over the land; clouds of white dust and dusky-brown smoke, that
came from more than one blazing street and burning ship--among
the latter was a two-decker, fired by the French rockets--rose high
above the green spires and batteries of Sebastopol, and overhung it
like a sombre pall, while shorn of its rays the sun resembled a huge
red globe hung in mid-air above us. Gradually it seemed to fade out
altogether, and then the whole sky became of a dull, leaden, and
wintry gray. By this time our epaulettes had entirely disappeared,
and our uniforms were hopeless rags; in some instances eked out by
plain clothes, or whatever one could pick up; and the government
contractors had such vague ideas of the dimensions of the human
foot, that some of the boots issued to the soldiers would not have
fitted a child of ten years old, and as they dared not throw away her
Majesty's property, many men went bare-footed, with their boots
dangling from their knapsack or waist-belt.
 "In our present toggery we may meet the Russians," said
Dyneley, our adjutant; "but I should scarcely like to figure in them
before the girls at Winchester, in 'the Row,' or at the windows of 'the
Rag.'"

In great masses, 30,000 Frenchmen were forming to assault the

Malakoff, with 5,000 Sardinians as supports.

A long line of cavalry--Hussars with their braided dolmans,

Lancers with their fluttering banneroles, Dragoons with glittering
helmets, and all with loaded carbine on thigh, had been, from an
early hour, thrown to the front, to form a cordon of sentinels, to
prevent straggling; while a similar line was formed in our rear to
keep back idlers from Balaclava; yet to obtain glimpses of the
impending attack, groups of red-fezzed Turks, of picturesque-looking
Eupatorians, and fur-capped Tartars, began to cluster on every
green knoll at a safe distance, where, in their excitement, they
jabbered and gesticulated in a manner most unusual for people so
generally placid and stolid.

At half-past eleven A.M. the pipes of the Highland Brigade were

heard, as it marched in from Kamara, and got into position in
reserve of the right attack; and the fine appearance of the men of
those mountains--"the backbone of Britain," as Pope Sylvester called
them of old--elicited a hearty cheer from the Royal Welsh as they
defiled past, with all their black plumes and striped tartans waving in
the biting wind.

During all the preceding day, the batteries had thundered in

salvoes against Sebastopol; and hence vast gaps were now visible in
the streets and principal edifices, most of which were half hidden in
lurid sheets of fire; and by the bridge of boats that lay between the
north and south side, thousands of fugitives, laden with their goods
and household lares, their children, sick, and aged, had been seen to
pour so long as light remained.
 Until the French began to move, the eyes of all in our division
were turned on our famous point of attack--the Redan; and I may
inform the non-military reader, that a redan in field fortification
means simply an indented work with lines and faces; but this one
resembled an unfinished square, with two sides meeting at the
salient angle in front of our parallels, i. e., the trenches by which we
had dug our way under cover towards it.

With a strong reinforcement, Nicholaevitch Tolstoff, now, as

before stated, a general, had entered the Redan by its rear or open
face; and since his advent, it had been greatly strengthened. In the
walls of the parapet he had constructed little chambers roofed with
sacks of earth, and these secure places rendered the defenders
quite safe from falling shells. In the embrasures were excavations
wherein the gunners might repose close by their guns, but ever
armed and accoutred; and by a series of trenches it communicated
with the great clumsy edifice known as the Malakoff Tower.

By a road to the right, the Redan also communicated with the

extensive quadrangle of buildings forming the Russian barracks, one
hundred yards distant; and in its fear there lay the Artillery or
Dockyard Creek. The flat caps, and in other instances the round
glazed helmets, of the Russians and the points of their bayonets,
bristling like a hedge of steel, could be seen above the lines of its
defence and at the deeply-cut embrasures, where the black cannon
of enormous calibre peered grimly down upon us.

Our arrangements were very simple. At noon the French were to

attack the Malakoff; and as soon as they fell to work we were to
assault the Redan, and I had volunteered for the scaling-ladder
party, which consisted of 320 picked men of the Kentish Buffs and
97th or Ulster Regiment.

In the trenches of our left attack could be seen the black

bearskins of our Brigade of Guards, and massed in dusky column on
the hill before their camp, their red now changed to a very neutral
tint indeed, were the slender battalions of the Third Division,
motionless and still, save when the wind rustled the tattered silk of
the colours, or the sword of an officer gleamed as he dressed the
ranks. A cross cannonade was maintained, as usual, between our
batteries and those of the enemy. The balls were skipping about in
all directions, and several "roving Englishmen," adventurous tourists,
"own correspondents," and unwary amateurs, who were there, had
to scuttle for their lives to some place of shelter.

As I joined the ladder party, I could not help thinking of many a

past episode in my life: of Estelle, who had been false; of Valerie,
who was lost to me; and of the suspicion that Winifred Lloyd loved
me. Ere another hour, I might be lying dead before the Redan, and
there forget them all! Our covering party consisted of 200 of the
Buffs and Rifles under Captain Lewes; but alas for the weakness of
our force, as compared with thousands of men to oppose. The
strength of the Second Division detailed against the Redan consisted
only of 760 men of the 3rd, 41st, and 62nd regiments, with a
working party of 100 from the Royal Welsh. The rest of Colonel
Windham's brigade was in reserve.

Brigadier Shirley, who was to command the whole, had been ill on
board-ship; but the moment the gallant fellow heard that an assault
was resolved on, he hastened to join us. Prior, however, to his
coming, Colonel Windham and Colonel Unett of the 29th were
deciding which of them should take precedence in leading the
attack. They coolly tossed up a shilling, and the latter won. Thus he
had the alternative of saying whether he would go first, or follow
Windham; but a glow spread over his face, and he exclaimed,

"I have made my choice, and I shall be the first man inside the
Redan!"

However, it was doomed to be otherwise, as soon afterwards a

ball from the abattis severely wounded and disabled him. When we
had seen that our men had carefully loaded and capped and cast
loose their cartridges, all became very still, and there was certainly
more of thought than conversation among us. Many of the men in
some regiments were little better than raw recruits, and were
scarcely masters of their musketry drill. Disease in camp and death
in action had fast thinned our ranks of the carefully-trained and well-
disciplined soldiers who landed in Bulgaria; and when these--the
pest and bullet--failed, the treachery of contractors, and the general
mismanagement of the red-tapists, did the rest. Accustomed as we
had been to the daily incidents of this protracted siege, there was a
great hush over all our ranks; the hush of anticipation, and perhaps
of grave reflection, came to the lightest-hearted and most heedless
there.

"What is the signal for us to advance?" I inquired.

"Four rockets," replied Dyneley, our adjutant, who was on foot,

with his sword drawn, and a revolver in his belt.

"There go the French to attack the tower!" cried Gwynne; and

then a hum of admiration stole along our lines as we saw them, at
precisely five minutes to twelve o'clock, "like a swarm of bees," issue
from their trenches, the Linesmen in kepis and long blue coats, the
Zouaves in turbans and baggy red breeches, under a terrible shower
of cannon and musketry, fiery in their valour, quick, ardent, and
eager! They swept over the little space of open ground that lay
between the head of their sap, and, irresistible in their number,
poured on a sea of armed men, a living tide, a human surge, section
after section, and regiment after regiment, to the assault.

"O'er ditch and stream, o'er crest and wall,

They jump and swarm, they rise and fall;
With vives and cris, with chee0rs and cries.
Like thunderings in autumnal skies;
Till every foot of ground is mud,
With tears and brains and bones and blood.
Yet, faith, it was a grim delight
To see the little devils fight!"
With wonderful speed and force, their thousands seemed to drift
through the gaping embrasures of the tower, which appeared to
swallow them up--all save the dead and dying, who covered the
slope of the glacis; and in two minutes more the tricolor of France
was waving on the summit of the Korniloff bastion!

But the work of the brave French did not end there. From twelve
till seven at night, they had to meet and repulse innumerable
attempts of the Russians to regain what they had lost--the great
tower, which was really the key of the city; till, in weariness and
despair, the latter withdrew, leaving the slopes covered with corpses
that could only be reckoned by thousands. The moment the French
standard fluttered out above the blue smoke and grimy dust of the
tower, a vibration seemed to pass along all our ranks. Every face lit
up; every eye kindled; every man instinctively grasped more tightly
the barrel of his musket, or the blade of his sword, or set his cap
more firmly on his head, for the final rush.

"The tricolor is on the Malakoff! By heavens, the French are in!

hurrah!" cried several officers.

"Hurrah!" responded the stormers of the Light and Second

Divisions.

"There go the rockets!" cried Phil Caradoc, pointing with his sword
to where the tiny jets of sparkles were seen to curve in the wind
against the dull leaden sky, their explosion unheard amid the roar of
musketry and of human voices in and beyond the Malakoff.

"Ladders, to the front! eight men per ladder!" said Welsford, of

the 97th.

"It is our turn now, lads; forward, forward!" added some one else-
-Raymond Mostyn, of the Rifles, I think.

"There is a five-pound note offered to the first man inside the

Redan!" exclaimed little Owen Tudor, a drummer of ours, as he slung
his drum and went scouring to the front: but a bullet killed the poor
boy instantly, and Welsford had his head literally blown off by a
cannon ball.

In their dark green uniforms, which were patched with many a

rag, a hundred men of the Rifle Brigade who carried the scaling
ladders preceded us; and the moment they and we began to issue,
which we did at a furious run, with bayonets fixed and rifles at the
short trail, from the head of the trenches, the cannon of the Redan
opened a withering fire upon us. The round shot tore up the earth
beneath our feet, or swept men away by entire sections, strewing
limbs and other fragments of humanity everywhere; the exploding
shells also dealt death and mutilation; the grape and cannister swept
past in whistling showers; and wicked little shrapnels were flying
through the air like black spots against the sky; while, with a hearty
and genuine English "hurrah!" that deepened into a species of fierce
roar, we swept towards the ditch which so few of us might live to
recross.

Thick fall our dead on every hand, and the hoarse boom of the
cannon is sounding deep amid the roar of the concentrated
musketry. Crawling and limping back to the trenches for succour and
shelter, the groaning or shrieking wounded are already pouring in
hundreds to the rear, reeking with blood; and, within a minute, the
whole slope of the Redan is covered with our redcoats--the dead or
the helpless--thick as the leaves lie "when forests are rended!"

CHAPTER LV.--INSIDE THE REDAN.

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