The men taken in affairs of outposts by the Sardinians were in the same state, and it was evident that the Russians were rapidly declining in condition. They got 3lb. of bread or 1½lb. of biscuit a day, and a little barley, which they boiled into a kind of soup; this constituted their rations. They were kept alive by assurances that the Allies must soon go, and then they would have the spoils of the English camp, which was rich in everything but food. Most of these men were exceedingly tractable, and were excellent servants so long as they were not allowed rum. One of them, a Polish non-commissioned officer, was of great use, but he was seized with an unconquerable desire to join the Polish Legion at Varna, and got as far as Odessa, when he was recognized and shot as a deserter.
For some time the actual work of the army consisted in preparations for the winter on the plateau, dismantling the houses of the city for wood, and destroying the trenches for the sake of the gabions, which burned well and saved fuel. Sebastopol gradually came up piecemeal to the camp. Doors, windows, locks, hinges, fireplaces, stoves, pictures, chairs, tables, beams of wood, roofing, ceiling, flooring, sheet-lead, rolled copper, cut stone, crockery, and innumerable articles of every description, were brought up by carts, horses, ponies, and by men, every day in great quantities,{388} and were found most useful in the construction and ornamentation of our huts. There were very few officers who had not got some trophies; arms of various descriptions, greatcoats, and helmets are the most common; but pictures of saints, often embellished by the finders with grotesque adornments of moustachios, short pipes, and eye-glasses, and portraits of the late Czar, which had not quite escaped the spirit of improvement manifested by our soldiery, were very common. Many articles of English workmanship abounded, and canary birds sang and flowers bloomed amid all the murky horrors of these blood-stained casements. All the shot and shell were collected, and the French gave their soldiers about 3½d. or 4d. for each 13-inch shell or large shot which they brought up to certain depôts indicated for the purpose.
The road made great progress. Upwards of 6,000 men were engaged upon it daily, and if Mr. Doyne could have procured more tools from the Quartermaster-General, the work would have gone on still faster; but he experienced considerable difficulty in getting the authorities to comply with his requisitions, although he handed over the matériel of the Corps to them when he arrived in the Crimea. Labour was ample, and was not denied; the tools were, however, worn out and worthless, and we were guilty of the very bad economy, in a country like the Crimea, where skilled labour cost so much, of repairing implements which had been damaged or used up, instead of issuing new ones. Many of these tools belonged to the Engineers' department, and were completely worked up by the Sappers and Miners during the siege. No, we were not perfect even yet. Though Sebastopol was ours, there were little blurs and blotches which might have been removed from our administrative escutcheon by very small labour. We borrowed flour from the French, and from the Sardinians, and, as we had been liberal lenders, they could not complain of our making small requisitions upon them now and then.
Although Forts Alexander and Nicholas were nearly intact, the Russians resolved not to spare them, and the effect of their practice upon them proved that the stone of which they were composed would not resist a lengthened and continuous fire at close quarters. When their shot hit the stones at the angle of the fort, they generally split and broke the outer masonry. The stones were of white freestone, cut in long parallelograms, and if a shot struck the middle of a block it generally split it right through, so that a few projectiles at any one point would speedily destroy all cohesion, and crumble the wall into a breach. Still, the forts were beautifully built, and were of very great strength, notwithstanding the inferior nature of the building material. They were all reared upon capacious vaults of solid masonry, and the casemates, curtains, and parapets were of prodigious thickness, and of very superior finish and workmanship. If a line-of-battle ship could have got alongside, she could soon have destroyed Fort Alexander, or any fort built of similar material. The enemy{389} suspected that the French were making a battery behind Fort Alexander, and they shelled frequently in that direction; and, knowing the position of the mortar battery behind Fort Nicholas, they directed a pretty constant vertical fire on the guard behind that work.