Six months have already passed since the first cannon-ball whistled
from the bastions of Sevastopol, and ploughed the earth in the works
of the enemy, and since that day thousands of bombs, cannon-balls, and
rifle-balls have been flying incessantly from the bastions into the
trenches and from the trenches into the bastions, and the angel of
death has never ceased to hover over them.
Thousands of men have been disappointed in satisfying their ambition;
thousands have succeeded in satisfying theirs, in becoming swollen
with pride; thousands repose in the embrace of death. How many red
coffins and canvas canopies there have been! And still the same sounds
are echoed from the bastions, and still on clear evenings the French
peer from their camp, with involuntary tremor, at the yellow, furrowed
bastions of Sevastopol, at the black forms of our sailors moving about
upon them, and count the embrasures and the iron cannon which project
angrily from them; the under officer still gazes through his telescope,
from the heights of the telegraph station, at the dark figures of the
French at their batteries, at their tents, at the columns moving over
the green hill, and at the puffs of smoke which issue forth from the
trenches,—and a crowd of men, formed of divers races, still streams in
throngs from various quarters, with the same ardor as ever, and with
desires differing even more greatly than their races, towards this
fateful spot. And the question, unsolved by the diplomats, has still
not been solved by powder and blood.