But red breeches and blue breeches, tepi and Zouave fez, could soon be distinguished amid the flames, moving from house to house. Before five o'clock there were numbers of men coming back with plunder, such as it was, and llussian relics were otlered for sale in camp before the Eussian battalions had marched out of the city. The sailors, too, were not behindhand in looking for " loot," and Jack could be seen staggering under chairs, tables, and lumbering old pictures, through evei'y street, and making his way back to the trenches with vast accumulations of Avorthlessness. Several men lost their lives by explosions on this and the followingday. At 7'10 small detonations of shells and powder magazines took place in the town behind the Bcdan, and on the left of the Dockyard Creek.
At 7"12 immense clouds of black smoke rose from behind Fort Paul, probably from a steamer, which we found burning in the dockyard. The liussian columns, which had been defiling in a continuous stream across the bridge, now became broken into sm;ill bodies, or went over in intermittent masses, unscathed hy the shot and shell which plunged into the water close beside them. At 7'45, the last dense column marched past, and soon afterwards the bridge was pulled asunder, and the pieces were all floated across to the north side at 8'7. The boats did not cease pulling backward and forward all the time, and the steamers were exceedingly busy long after the garrison moved. At nine there were many explosions in the town amid the burning ruins, and the battlements of Fort Nicholas appeared in flames.
Still there was no explosion there nor in Fort Paul. As the rush from camp now became very great, and every one sought to visit the Malakholf and the Redan, which were filled with dead and dying men, a line of English cavalry was posted across the front from our extreme left to the French right. They were stationed in all the ravines and roads to the town and trenches, with orders to keep back all persons except the Generals and Staff, and officers and men on duty, and to stop all our men returning with plunder from the town, and to take it from them. As they did not stop the French, or Turks, or Sardinians, this order gave rise to a good deal of grumbling, particularly when a man after lugging a heavy chair several miles, or a table, or some such article, was deprived of it by our sentries.
The French in one instance complained that our Dragoons let English soldiers pass with Russian muskets and would not permit the French to carry off these trophies, but there was not any foundation for the complaint. There was assuredly no jealousy on one side or the other. It so happened that as the remnants of the French regiments engaged on the left against the MalakhofF and Little Redan marched to their tents this morning, our Second Division was drawn up on the parade-ground in front of their camp, and the French had to pass their lines. The instant the leadingregiment of Zouaves came up to the spot where our first regiment was placed, the men, with one spontaneous burst, rent the air with an English cheer.
The French officers drew their swords, their men dressed up and marched past as if at a review, while regiment after regiment of the Second Division caught up the cry, and at last our men presented arms to their brave comrades of France, the officers on both sides saluted with their swords, and this continued till the last man had marched by. Mingled with the plunderers from the front were many wounded men. The ambulances never ceased, now moving heavily and slowly with their burdens, again rattling at a trot to the front for a fresh cargo, and the ground between the trenches and the camp was studded with carolets or mule litters. Already the funeral parties had conunenced their labours. The Russians all this time were swarming on the north side, and evinced the liveliest interest in the progress of the explosions and conflagrations.
They took up ground in their old camps, and swarmed all over the face of the hills behind the northern iorts. Their steamers cast anchor, or were moored close to the shore among the creeks, on the north side, near Fort Catherine. Ey degrees the Generals, French and English, and the staff officers, edged down upon tlie town, but Fort Paul had not yet gone up, and Fort Nicholas was burning, and our engineers declared the place would be unsafe for forty-eight hours, iloving down, however, on the right Hank of our cavalry pickets, a small party of us managed to turn them cleverly, and to get out among the French works between the Mamelon and Malakhoif. The ground is here literally paved with shot and shell, and the surface is deeply honeycombed by the explosions of the bombs at evei'y square yard.