The principal work was a trench in the cliff, half-way up, and when you came to squint along a gun, and saw only four little black eyes staring at you over a parapet of earth which did not seem three inches high, you began to understand the difficulty of striking such objects. " Try 2,500 yards! " The gun was trained. At the words, "Well! Fire!" the iron globe, whose curve you could trace through the air, hurtled with the peculiar hiss of its race, over the parapet, knocking up a black pillar of earth from the crest of the hill, and bounding far away to the rear. " Too high! " The Russians replied at once. The shot flew over Captain Spratt's head, who was at the foretop, and plunged into the water 200 or 300 yards beyond us. The Muscov had been playing the game of firing short, to entice us well under his battery. Stromboli kept edging nearer, the captains of the guns were all intently gazing along their sights. " Try 2,000 yards." Away flew the iron messenger again, but he only told the Russians to bob their heads and keep out of his way, and passed behind them. Aimed "too high" again. The Spitfire, Cracker, and Grinder were now coming into action. The enemy's field-pieces took to shell, and studded the air above us with smoke-clouds, the angry hum of their splinters was heard on all sides. Whiz! — right across our deck comes a shot, and plashes into the water over our counter. Our long gun at the bow sends a shot in reply, at 1,700 yards, which goes right into their battery this time. Whiz! whiz! two shots, one after the other, one dashing up the water close to her sides, the other cutting the jib foot-rope of the Stromboli.
Sir Houston Stewart resolved to return. That there was no
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
intention of going up to Nicholaieff with a steam-sloop, a surveying sloop, and some small gun-boats I need not say, and had the enemy been driven from the Spit ten times a day he could have returned at any time, and have constructed just such another flying defence as that with which we were engaged. Indeed, the Admiral would not have replied to the enemy's fire at all, but that Jack is dissatisfied if not permitted to return a shot whenever one is sent at him. With a parting salute, the Stromboli set her jib, slewed round, and steamed slowly down the river. The enemy continued to fire after us, but the Spitfire, Grinder, and Cracker covered the movement, and a shell from the latter burst in the earthwork, and appeared to do some mischief. As we returned towards the Liman, the Spiteful, Triton, and Arrow, which had remained off the mouth of the Bug — " an unpleasant position,'* said Sir Houston Stewart, " which will be appreciated by London lodgers " — were seen steaming up to us, as they apprehended that they could help us out of a scrape; but the emulative gunners had not a chance of doing anything.
The little flotilla remained at its anchorage off the Bug, for the night, without any apprehensions that the enemy from Nicholaieff could do any harm. Mr. Brooker, one of the most active and intelligent officers of the Spitfire — and that is indeed saying much, where all were so able and so willing — volunteered to go in the Cracker after dusk, to ascertain the force and position of the enemy's batteries; but it was judged inexpedient to hazard the loss of a gun-boat, which would be made a subject of great rejoicing and triumph to the enemy, while the success of the experiment would not be of much importance, inasmuch as we were not in a position to attack and occupy ISTicholaieff. Had Marshal Pelissier listened to the demand of Sir Edmund Lyons for 15,000 or 20,000 men, there would, indeed, have been some utility in a reconnaissance, for the operations of our steam fleet might have mystified the enemy so completely as to enable us to land a force, and by a coup de main to destroy, though not to occupy, Nicholaieft*. The town is 5,000 yards from the Spit, on the confluence of the Ingul and Bug, and it would be necessary to force batteries, booms, sunken vessels, gun-boats, in very shoal and difficult water, and get round into the Ingul itself, before the fleet could fire a shot on the place. Every vessel would have to run the gauntlet of high banks lined with riflemen which their guns could not reach.