On the night after this contest the enemy sunk four or five ships inside the booms, so as to present a fourth barrier across the roads. An armistice took place for an hour on the 27th. In the orders for the day, Lord Raglan notified that at the request of General Osten-Sacken, an armistice was granted from twelve till one o'clock to enable the Russians to bury their dead. At twelve o'clock precisely, white flags were run up on the battery flagstaff's on both sides, and immediately afterwards a body of Russians issued from their new work near the Malakoff, which had been the object of the French attack of the 24th, and proceeded to search for their dead. The French were sent down from Inkerman on a similar errand. A few Russian officers advanced about half-way up towards our lines, where they were met by some of the officers of the allies, and extreme courtesy, the interchange of profound salutations, and enormous bowing, marked the interview. The officers sauntered up and down, and shakos were raised and caps doffed politely as each came near an enemy.
The exact object of the armistice it would have been hard to say, for neither French nor Russians seemed to find any bodies unburied. Shortly before one o'clock, the Russians retired inside their earthwork. At one o'clock the white flags were all hauled down in an instant, and the last fluttering bit of white bunting had scarcely disappeared over the parapet, when the flash and roar of a gun from Malakoff announced that the war had begun once more. The French almost simultaneously fired a gun from their batteries also; in a minute afterwards the popping of rifles commenced as usual on both sides. The Cossacks about Balaklava were particularly busy, and, having nothing better to do, I spent an hour watching them through my glass from the artillery camp at Kadikoi. They had a picket of ten horsemen at Kamara, from which the vedettes on the top of Canrobert's Hill were furnished, and they had a similar body of eight horsemen on the slope at the back of No. 2 Redoubt. There were a few regular Hussars in a handsome dark blue or green uniform, with white belts, on duty as sentries. The horses seemed to follow the Cossacks about like dogs. The men all wore long loose grey coats and round fur caps. They could not be very badly off for provisions, inasmuch as the fields behind them towards the slope of the hill to Mackenzie's farm were tolerably well filled with cattle.
From the top of Canrobert's Hill their vedette could see everything that went on in the plains, from the entrance to Balaklava to the ridges on which the French right rested. Not a horse, cart, or man, could go in or out of the town which this sentinel could not see if he had good eyesight, for he was quite visible to any person who gazed on the top of Canrobert's Hill. The works of the railway must have caused this Cossack very serious discomposure. What on earth could he think of them? Gradually he saw villages of white huts rise up on the hill-sides and in the recesses of the valleys, and from the Cavalry Camp to the heights of Balaklava, he could behold line after line of snug angular wooden buildings, each with its chimney at work, and he could discern the tumult and bustle of Vanity Fair. This might have been all very puzzling, but it could have been nothing to the excitement of looking at a long line of black trucks rushing round and under the hill at Kadikoi, and running down the incline to the town at the rate of twenty miles an hour. A number of the Cossacks did gallop up to the top of the hill to look at a phenomenon of that kind, and they went capering about, and shaking their lances, in immense wonderment and excitation of spirits when it had disappeared.
In addition to the old lines thrown up by Liprandi close to the YVoronzofF-road, the Russians erected, to the rear and north of it, a very large hexagonal work, capable of containing a large number of men, and of being converted into a kind of intrenched camp. The lines of these works were very plain as they were marked out by the snow, which lay in the trench after that which fell on the ground outside and inside had melted. There were, however, no infantry in sight, nor did any movement of troops take place over the valley of the Tchernaya. Emboldened by the success of the 24th, the Russians were apparently preparing to throw up another work on the right of the new trenches, as if they had made up their minds to besiege the French at Inkerman, and assail their right attack. They sent up two steamers to the head of the harbour, which greatly annoyed the right attack, and it occurred to Captain Pec], of the Diamond, that it would be quite possible to
CRIMEA.