Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
permitted themselves to be caught. Ere long the Isthmus of Corinth
came in sight--that long tract of rock connecting the bleak-looking
Morea with the Grecian continent, and uniting two chains of lofty
mountains, the classical names of which recalled the days of our
school-boy tasks; thence on to Candia, the hills of which rose so pale
and white from the deep indigo blue of the sea, that they seemed as if
sheeted with the snow of an early winter; but when we drew nearer the
shore, the land-wind wafted towards us the aromatic odour that arises
from the rank luxuriance of the vast quantity of flowers and shrubs
which there grow wild, and form food for the wild goats and hares.
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.
These blasts sometimes cast the tent-ropes loose by uprooting the
pegs, causing fears lest the pole--whereon hung the revolvers, swords,
pans, and kettles of the occupants--might snap, and compel them, when
hoping to enjoy a comfortable night's rest off duty, to come forth
shivering from bed to grope for the loosened pegs amid the muddy soil
or wet grass, and by the aid of a stone or a stray shot--if the mallet
was not forthcoming--to secure them once more. This might be varied by
a shower of rain, which sputtered in your face as you lay abed, till
the canvas became thoroughly wetted, and so tightened. Anon it might
shrink; then the ropes would strain, and unless you were in time to
relax them, down might come the whole domicile in a wet mass on those
who were within it. Now and then a random shot fired from Sebastopol,
or the whistling shell, with a sound like t'wit-t'wit-t'wit,
describing a fiery arc as it soared athwart the midnight sky on its
errand of destruction, varied the silence and darkness of the hour.
The clink of shovels and pickaxes came ever and anon from the
trenches, where the miners and working-parties were pushing their sap
towards the city. The sentinels walked their weary round, or stood
still, each on his post shivering, it might be, in the passing blast,
but looking fixedly and steadily towards the enemy. The rest slept
soundly after their day of toil and danger, watching, starvation, and
misery; forgetful of the Russian watchfires that burned in the
distance, heedless of the perils of the coming day, and of _where_ the
coming night might find them. And so the night would pass, till the
morning bugle sounded; then the stir and bustle began, and there was
no longer rest for any, from the general of the day down to the goat
of the Welsh Fusileers; the cooking, and cleaning of arms, parade of