This plan Menschikoff hastened to put into execution. Time pressed:
the enemy had learnt through spies that an assault on Sebastopol was
close at hand. Besides, the Grand Dukes had arrived, and the troops,
worked up to the highest pitch of loyal fanatic fervour, were mad to
fight under the eyes of the sons of their father, the holy Czar.
Dawn broke late on that drear November morning: November the 5th--a
day destined to be ever memorable in the annals of British arms: a
dawn that was delayed and darkened by dense, driving mists, and
rain-clouds, black and lowering.
Nothing, however, had broken the repose of the British camp, or hinted
at the near approach of countless foes.
The night had been tranquil; the enemy quiet; only, in the valley
beneath our pickets on the Inkerman heights, some sentries had heard
the constant rumbling of wheels, but their officers to whom they
reported did not interpret the same aright, as the movement of
artillery.
An hour or more before daylight the church-bells of Sebastopol rang
out a joyous peal. Why not? It was the Sabbath morning. But these
chimes, alas! ushered in a Sunday of struggle and bloodshed, not of
peaceful devotion and prayer.
The outlying pickets had been relieved, and were marching campwards;
the Second Division had had its customary "daylight parade"; the men
had stood to their arms for half-an-hour, and, as nothing was
stirring, had been dismissed to their tents; the fatigue-parties had
been despatched for rations, water, fuel--in a word, the ordinary
daily duties of the camp had commenced, when the sharp rattle of
musketry rang out angrily, and well sustained in the direction of our
foremost picket on Shell Hill.
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