There was a pretty strong current running at the rate of about three miles an hour over the flats off the town of Yenikale, and the water was almost as turbid as that of the Thames, and of a more yellow hue, as it rushed from the Sea of Azoff. Two gunboats, carrying twelve small pieces each, were moored off the forts{268} of Yenikale, and there was a floating battery close to them armed with two very heavy guns, the floor being flush with the water, and the guns quite uncovered. One man was found dead in the battery at Yenikale, lying, as he fell, with the match in his hand, close to the gun he was about to fire, and two more Russians were found dead on the beach, but they looked as if they had been killed by the explosion of the magazine. The guns in Yenikale were new and fine. Some of them were mounted on a curious kind of swivel — the platforms were upon the American principle. One brass piece, which was lying near the guard-house, was said to have been taken from the Turks at Sinope. Two barks, armed on the main-deck with guns, and used as transports, were resting on the sand, where they had been sunk by our ships as they attempted to escape to the Sea of Azoff. It was suspected that there were few regular troops in proportion to the numbers in and about Kertch and Yenikale, and that there was a large proportion of invalids, local militia men, and pensioners among the soldiers who made such a feeble and inglorious defence. The appearance of our armada as it approached must have been most formidable. The hospital, which was in excellent order, contained sick and wounded soldiers, the former suffering from rheumatism, the latter sent from Sebastopol. The enemy fired the magazine close at hand without caring for these unfortunate fellows, and every pane of glass in the windows was shattered to pieces by the explosion. The total number of guns taken at Yenikale was about twenty-five, of which ten were in a battery inside the old Genoese ramparts, four in a detached battery, and eleven lying partially dismounted about the works.
At about half-past six o'clock the batteries in the Bay of Kertch ceased firing, and the Russians abandoned the town. Dark pillars of smoke, tinged at the base with flame, began to shoot up all over the hill-sides. Some of them rose from the government houses and stores of Ambalaki, where we landed; others from isolated houses further inland; others from stores, which the retreating Russians destroyed in their flight. Constant explosions shook the air, and single guns sounded here and there continuously throughout the night. Here a ship lay blazing on a sandbank; there a farm-house in flames lighted up the sky, and obscured the pale moon with volumes of inky smoke.
As there was nothing to be done at sea, the ships being brought to anchor far south of the scene of action with the gunboats, it was resolved to land at the nearest spot, which was about one mile and a half or two miles from Pavlovskaya Battery. A row of half a mile brought us from our anchorage, where the ship lay, in three fathoms, to a beautiful shelving beach, which was exposed, however, only for a few yards, as the rich sward grew close to the brink of the tideless sea. The water at the shore, unaffected by the current, was clear, and abounded in fish. The land rose abruptly, at the distance of 200 yards from the beach, to a ridge parallel to the line of the sea about 100 feet in height, and the interval between the shore and the ridge was dotted with houses, in patches here and there, through which the French were already{269} running riot, breaking in doors, pursuing hens, smashing windows — in fact, "plundering," in which they were assisted by all of our men who could get away.