Every hour produced some new, or rather ancient, object of interest as we ploughed the classic waters of the Ægean Sea, and no man among us, who had read and knew the past glories, traditions, and poetry of the shores we looked on, could hear uttered without deep interest the names of those isles and bays--that on yonder plain, as we skirted the mainland of Asia, stood the Troy of Priam; that yonder hill towering in the background, a purple cone against a golden sky, was Mount Ida capped with snow, Scamander flowing at its foot; Ida, where Paris, the princely shepherd, adjudged the prize of beauty to Venus, and whence the assembled gods beheld the Trojan strife; for every rock and peak we looked on was full of the memories of ancient days, and of that "bright land of battle and of song," which Byron loved with all a poet's enthusiasm. Dusk was closing as we entered the Hellespont; the castles of Europe and Asia were, however, distinctly visible, and we could see the red lights that shone in the Turkish fort, and the windmills whirling on the Sigean promontory, as we glided, with squared yards, before a fair and steady breeze, into those famous straits which Mohammed IV. fortified to secure his city and fleets against the fiery energy of the Venetians; and now, as I do not mean "to talk guide-book," our next chapter will find us in the land of strife and toil, of battle and the pest; in that Crim Tartary which, to so many among us, was to prove the land of death and doom.
CHAPTER XXXI.-UNDER CANVAS.
The 4th of October found me with my regiment (my detachment "handed over," and responsibility, so far as it was concerned, past) before Sebastopol, which our army had now environed, on _one_ side at least. And now I was face to face with the Russians at last, and war had become a terrible reality. Tents had been landed, and all the troops were fairly under canvas. Our camp was strengthened by a chain of intrenchments dug all round it, and connected with those of the French, which extended to the sea on their left, while our right lay towards the valley of Inkermann, at the entrance of which, on a chalky cliff, 190 feet high at its greatest elevation, rose the city of Sebastopol, with all its lofty white mansions, that ran in parallel streets up the steep acclivity. In memory I can see it now, as I used to see it then, from the trenches, the advanced rifle-pits, or through the triangular door of my tent, with all its green-domed churches, its great round frowning batteries, forts Alexander and Constantine and others, perforated for cannon, tier above tier; and far inland apparently, for a distance after even the suburbs had ceased, were seen the tall slender masts of the numerous shipping that had taken shelter in the far recesses of the harbour, nearly to the mouth of the Tchernaya, from our fleets (which now commanded all the Black Sea). And a pretty sight they formed in a sunny day, when all their white canvas was hanging idly on the yards to dry.
Nearer the mouth of the great harbour were the enormous dark hulls of the line-of-battle ships--the Three Godheads of 120 guns, the Silistria of 84, the Paris and Constantine, 120 each, and other vessels of that splendid fleet which was soon after sunk to bar our entrance. Daily the Russians threw shot and shell at us, while we worked hard to get under cover. The sound of those missiles was strange and exciting at first to the ears of the uninitiated; but after a time the terrible novelty of it passed away, or was heard with indifference; and with indifference, too, even those who had not been at Alma learned to look on the killed and wounded, who were daily and nightly borne from the trenches to the rear, the latter to be under the care of the toil-worn surgeons, and the former to lie for a time in the dead-tents. The siege-train was long in arriving. "War tries the strength of the military framework," says Napier. "It is in peace the framework itself must be formed, otherwise barbarians would be the leading soldiers of the world. _A perfect army can only be made by civil institutions_." Yet with us such was the state of the "framework," by the results of a beggarly system of political economy, that when war was declared--a war after forty years of peace--our arsenals had not a sufficient quantity of shells for the first battering-train, and the fuses issued had been in store rotting and decaying since the days of Toulouse and Waterloo. This was but one among the many instances of gross mismanagement which characterised many arrangements of the expedition. And taking advantage of the delays, nightly the Russians, with marvellous rapidity, were throwing up additional batteries of enormous strength, mounted with cannon taken from the six line-of-battle ships which, by a desperate resolve of Prince Menschikoff's, were ultimately sunk across the harbour-mouth, where we could see the sea-birds, scared by the adverse cannonade, perching at times on their masts and royal-yards, which long remained visible above the water. Occasionally our war-steamers came near, and then their crews amused themselves by throwing shells into the town. Far up the inlet lay a Russian man-of-war, with a cannon ingeniously slung in her rigging. The shot from this, as they could slue it in any direction, greatly annoyed our sappers, and killed many of them, before one well-directed ball silenced it for ever.
Two thousand seamen with their officers, forming the Naval Brigade of gallant memory, were landed from our fleet, bringing with them a magnificent battering-train of ship-guns of the largest calibre; and these hardy and active fellows lent most efficient aid in dragging their ordnance and the stores over the rough and hilly ground that lies between Balaclava and the city. They were all in exuberant spirits at the prospect of a protracted "spree" ashore; for as such they viewed the circumstance of their forming a part of the combined forces destined to take Sebastopol, and they amused and astonished the redcoats by their freaks and pranks under fire, and their ready alacrity, jollity, and muscular strength. Guns of enormous weight and long range were fast being brought into position; the trenches were "pushed" with vigour; and now the work of a regular siege--the consecutive history of which forms no part of my narrative--was begun in stern earnest when the batteries opened on the 16th October. Our armies were placed in a semicircle, commanding the southern side of this great fortified city and arsenal of the Black Sea. They were in full possession of the heights which overlook it, and were most favourably posted for the usual operations of a siege, which would never have been necessary had it been entered after Alma was won. A deep and beautiful ravine, intersecting the elevated ground, extended from the harbour of the doomed city to Balaclava, dividing the area of the allied camp into two portions. The French, I have said, were on the left, and we held the right.
On the very day our batteries opened, I received the notification of my appointment to a company. This rapid promotion was consequent to the sad casualties of the Alma; and two days after, when the trench-guards were relieved, and I came off duty before daybreak, I crept back to my tent cold, miserable, and weary, to find my man Evans--brother of the gallant private of the same name who planted the Red Dragon on the great redoubt--busy preparing a breakfast for _three_, with the information that Caradoc and Gwynne, who had been on board the Hydaspes, an hospital ship for officers, had rejoined the night before, and had added their repast to mine for the sake of society. But food and other condiments were already scarce in the camp, and tidings that they had come from Balaclava with their haversacks _full_, caused more than one hungry fellow to visit my humble abode, the canvas walls of which flapped drearily in the wind, that came sweeping up the valley of Inkermann. Without undressing, as the morning was almost in, I threw myself upon my camp-bed, which served me in lieu of a sofa, and strove, with the aid of a plaid, a railway-rug, and blanket, to get some warmth into my limbs, after the chill of a night spent in the damp trenches; while Evans, poor fellow, was doing his best to boil our green and ill-ground coffee in a camp-kettle on a fire made of half-dried drift-wood, outside my tent, which was pitched in a line with thousands of others, on the slope of the hill that overlooked the valley where the Tchernaya flows. Though the season was considerably advanced now, the days were hot, but the nights were correspondingly chill; and at times a white dense fog came rolling up from the Euxine, rendering still greater the discomfort of a bell-tent, as it penetrated every crevice, and rendered everything therein--one's bedding and wearing apparel, even that which was packed in overlands and bullock-trunks--damp, while sugar, salt, and bread became quite moist. Luckily, somehow it did not seem to affect our ammunition. Then there came high winds, which blew every night, whistling over the hill-tops, singing amongst the tent-ropes, and bellowing down the valley of Inkermann.