After dinner, the evening passed very merrily, and the general cordially joined in the fun, though he seemed full of business, leaving the table several times to write despatches in his cabinet. We were smoking on the balcony at the back of the house, facing the vineyard, when the general returned from one of his short excursions, and I showed him the piece of canvas which I had obtained from my Zouave.
“Had the ball,” I said, “fallen upon a stone, or anything offering resistance, it might have killed twenty men, as it fell in the thickest part of the Third Division. The deep hole it made in the tent was as polished and hard as the interior of a marble mortar. This was no doubt caused by the rapid revolutions of the ball in burying itself before its force was spent. I noticed this whilst looking at the cavity; and the men who were lying in the tent were of my opinion, and assured me that it kept making a tremendous noise for some time after its fall.”
While we were engaged in conversation I believe that another despatch arrived, for the general and some of his Staff were called out. Observe, reader, that for a full hour the cannon and mortars had not ceased roaring throughout the camps, continually vomiting forth death and destruction on every side; yet every one present, I as well as the rest, appeared quite indifferent to that mournful noise. We were, however, soon awakened by the fierce rattling of the fusillade. All listened attentively, but without moving from their seats. A message from the general and fresh orders caused us to break up the party. I was leaving the house, intending to return to Balaklava, when I met Major Lindsey, one of the aides-de-camp of General Simpson, entering with, I believe, another despatch. He asked me where I was going to sleep: I answered, at Balaklava.
“Oh, nonsense! don’t go away. We are all ordered for half-past three in the morning. A great battle is expected, as the Russians are going to attack us upon a fresh point. I will give you a plank and a blanket in my room to lie upon for an hour or so.”
I accepted his kind offer, and he left me. When I informed my Zouave of the anticipated battle,
“By Jove!” said he, “I hope they will give me a gun and sword to go and fight. I shall make a busy day of it. I smell powder. Pray, governor, do beg of the general to let me go with them.”
The fellow had taken a drop too much, and he went on like a madman—no one could check him. We retired to our hospitable abode, and I went to sleep; but the mad Zouave was anywhere and everywhere. At three o’clock I awoke. The general and his Staff started—the cannonade was going on fiercely, but no fusillade was heard. At seven the general and all returned; and it was, as he said, a false alarm.
My Zouave returned at eight, loaded with provisions, which he told me he had borrowed of some fellows he had found fast asleep. We arrived on board the Baraguay d’Hilliers about ten, faint with fatigue and hunger, having had no breakfast.
Such was camp-life at head-quarters. It was like swimming between life and death. No one seemed to apprehend the least danger, while a successful sortie on the part of the enemy would have placed every one’s life in the greatest peril. So much for the unprofitable business of war!
Having fixed upon a spot for my kitchen, I immediately sent the stoves to the camp. As they happened to be close to the railway, they arrived early the next morning. In the course of the day I reached my field of battle, and to my great surprise found—what? Why, all my battery firing for the support of the Highland Brigade. The stoves had arrived early enough for the men to use them in cooking their dinners. Though I had given special orders that no one should meddle with them until I arrived, it gave me great pleasure to find that the men were using them to the best advantage and without instruction. In the first place, they could not possibly burn more than twenty pounds of wood in cooking for a hundred men, instead of several hundredweight, which was the daily consumption. Although I had not given them my receipts, they found they could cook their rations with more ease, and hoped they should soon have them for every-day use, instead of the small tin camp-kettles, and their open-air system of cooking. The process was very unsatisfactory, being dependent upon good, bad, or indifferent weather, and the fuel was often wet and difficult to ignite. Colonel Seymour, whom I invited to see the men using the stoves without tuition from me or anybody else, can testify to the accuracy of this fact, having witnessed the process and interrogated them upon the subject.