On this side of the bay, between Inkerman and the fortifications of the
north, two sailors were standing, in the middle of the day, on Telegraph
Height. Near them an officer was looking at Sebastopol through a
field-glass, and another on horseback, accompanied by a Cossack, had
just rejoined him near the great signal-pole.
The sun soared over the gulf, where the water, covered with ships at
anchor, and with sail and row boats in motion, played merrily in its
warm and luminous rays. A light breeze, which scarcely shook the leaves
of the stunted oak bushes that grew beside the signal-station, filled
the sails of the boats, and made the waves ripple softly. On the other
side of the gulf Sebastopol was visible, unchanged, with its unfinished
church, its column, its quay, the boulevard which cut the hill with a
green band, the elegant library building, its little lakes of azure
blue, with their forests of masts, its picturesque aqueducts, and, above
all that, clouds of a bluish tint, formed by powder-smoke, lighted up
from time to time by the red flame of the firing. It was the same proud
and beautiful Sebastopol, with its festal air, surrounded on one side by
the yellow smoke-crowned hills, on the other by the sea, deep blue in
color, and sparkling brilliantly in the sun. At the horizon, where the
smoke of a steamer traced a black line, white, narrow clouds were
rising, precursors of a wind. Along the whole line of the
fortifications, along the heights, especially on the left side, spurted
out suddenly, torn by a visible flash, although it was broad daylight,
plumes of thick white smoke, which, assuming various forms, extended,
rose, and colored the sky with sombre tints. These jets of smoke came
out on all sides--from the hills, from the hostile batteries, from the
city--and flew towards the sky. The noise of the explosions shook the
air with a continuous roar. Towards noon these smoke-puffs became rarer
and rarer, and the vibrations of the air strata became less frequent.
“Do you know that the second bastion is no longer replying?” said the
hussar officer on horseback; “it is entirely demolished. It is
terrible!”
“Yes, and the Malakoff replies twice out of three times,” answered the
one who was looking through the field-glass. “This silence is driving me
mad! They are firing straight on the Korniloff battery, and that is not
replying.”
“You’ll see it will be as I said; towards noon they will cease firing.
It is always that way. Come and take breakfast, they are waiting for us.
There is nothing more to see here.”
“Wait, don’t bother me,” replied, with marked agitation, the one looking
through the field-glass.
“What is it?--what’s the matter?”
“There is a movement in the trenches; they are marching in close
columns.”
“Yes, I see it well,” said one of the sailors; “they are advancing by
columns. We must set the signal.”
“But see, there--see! They are coming out of the trenches!”
They could see, in fact, with the naked eye black spots going down from
the hill into the ravine, and proceeding from the French batteries
towards our bastions. In the foreground, in front of the former, black
spots could be seen very near our lines. Suddenly, from different points
of the bastion at the same time, spurted out the white plumes of the
discharges, and, thanks to the wind, the noise of a lively fusillade
could be heard, like the patter of a heavy rain against the windows. The
black lines advanced, wrapped in a curtain of smoke, and came nearer.
The fusillade increased in violence. The smoke burst out at shorter and
shorter intervals, extended rapidly along the line in a single light,
lilac-colored cloud, unrolling and enlarging itself by turns, furrowed
here and there by flashes or rent by black points. All the noises
mingled together in the tumult of one continued roar.
“It is an assault,” said the officer, pale with emotion, handing his
glass to the sailor.
Cossacks and officers on horseback went along the road, preceding the
commander-in-chief in his carriage, accompanied by his suite. Their
faces expressed the painful emotion of expectation.
“It is impossible that it is taken!” said the officer on horseback.
“God in heaven!--the flag! Look now!” cried the other, choked by
emotion, turning away from the glass. “The French flag is in the
Malakoff mamelon!”
“Impossible!”