" At the left end of this work was the little mortar battery. Several broken Russian firelocks were here; and between the mortars, in a row, lay some eight or ten Russian corpses, with their little round caps laid over their faces. In the corner several blood-stained stretchers leant against the parapet. Captain Chapman, R.E., was here with one or two artillery officers; and behind, where the little groups stood chatting, lay the body of the Albanian chief, who had led so many sorties against the English. It was that of a man in the prime of life, well-formed and muscular. His weapons were gone, and his body had been partially stripped. The jacket was open, and showed three deep bayonet thrusts in the chest, and the healed scars of two former wounds were plainly visible. The countenance had a horrible expression; the blood which had flowed from the mouth had dried upon it; the eyes were staring wide, and the rich black hair was matted and frowzy. His flowing kilt, all torn and soiled, had been used as a kind of shroud, and partially enveloped the corpse. Outside the work, the dead lay thick, and just as they had fallen. About one hundred were there in all.
" On the right, the appearance of the French trench showed that the struggle there had been long and doubtful. This work had almost all been completely destroyed, and, though every effort during the two nights which had since elapsed had been made to repair it, it was still in rather a dilapidated condition. The gabions had been pulled away, and were lying in heaps in front of the work, and in a long train, up to the Malakoff Tower, just as the Russians had thrown them away in their flight. The enemy's dead were here in serious numbers.
" It certainly was an extraordinary scene. Everything was at once so warlike and yet so peaceful. Grim batteries were frowning down upon the spot from every side; yet the white flag was floating, and the parapets and embrasures were quite hidden with people eagerly gazing upon the spectacle below. The different troops soon met — the privates grinning and offering each other pipes, the officers bowing to one another as if all were on the' most friendly terms, and as if in the course of a couple of hours they would not be doing their very utmost to murder and destroy the very men on both sides to whom now both sides were so polite. Across from our trenches, in the direction of the Malakoff Tower, a man with a white flag was leading a large fatigue party, carrying many of the enemy's dead. Russian fatigue parties were also busy round and inside the French trench, engaged in the same melancholy duty; while the idlers, of whom there were considerable numbers spotted about, were picking their way among masses of stone, pieces of shell, piles of round shot, dead Russians in every attitude of agony, torn sandbags, gabions, fascines, bayonets, broken firelocks, thousands of flattened buUets, unused cartridges, and all the litter of a scene of combat. The Russian officers were well and neatly dressed in long fine great coats, white cross-belts, and swords. Two or three had quite a profusion of handsome rings on their fingers. All seemed to speak French well; some were very friendly and chatty, offering our own and the French officers cigars; while others were polite, but very grave and reserved, bowing to the Allied officei's when they passed, but never entering into conversation, or appearing to pay the least attention to anything but the duties in which they were immediately engaged.
" The Russian soldiers were both dirty and ragged, but beyond this defect in their appearance were well enough. They were very fine young men, and all in robust health, with round ruddy faces, on which was a perpetual grin at everything our men did or said. Their uniform was a short
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thick great coat of grey frieze, with waist-belts of the same material, round flat caps, and light leather boots; in fact, just the uniform of the men we fought at Tnkermann; none had the helmet or other equipments of the Imperial Guard. The stretchers which they brought to carry away their dead had evidently been much used for such work, as the canvas was perfectly black and stiflf with blood. One or two were properly made; the rest were strips of canvas, clumsily tied to rough poles of wood. The bodies of nearly all the slain were those of very fine young men."
Soon after three o'clock the armistice terminated, and the white emblems of a peace, transitory and fallacious, and which served only to place in stronger relief the stern realities which for so brief a space it had interrupted, were hauled down from trench and battery; and, even as the last flutter of their snowy folds vanished from the gaze, the iron messengers of death once more flew fast from side to side on their ill-omened errand.