'A movement in the entrenchments, thick columns advancing.'
'Yes! They can be seen even without a glass, marching in columns. The alarm must be given,' said the seaman.
'Look! look! They've left the trenches!'
And, really, with the naked eye one could see what looked like dark spots moving down the hill from the French batteries across the valley to the bastions. In front of these spots dark stripes were already visibly approaching our line. On the bastions white cloudlets burst in succession as if chasing one another. The wind brought a sound of rapid small-arm firing, like the beating of rain against a window. The dark stripes were moving in the midst of the smoke and came nearer and nearer. The sounds of firing, growing stronger and stronger, mingled in a prolonged, rumbling peal. Puffs of smoke rose more and more often, spread rapidly along the line, and at last formed one lilac cloud (dotted here and there with little faint lights and black spots) which kept curling and uncurling; and all the sounds blent into one tremendous clatter.
'An assault!' said the naval officer, turning pale and letting the seaman look through the telescope.
Cossacks galloped along the road, some officers rode by, the Commander-in-Chief passed in a carriage with his suite. Every face showed painful excitement and expectation.
'It's impossible they can have taken it,' said the mounted officer.
'By God, a standard!... Look! look!' said the other, panting, and he walked away from the telescope: 'A French standard on the Maláhof!'
The point from which the officer in the story, and Tolstoy himself in reality, watched the assault through a telescope is the spot marked 'a' on the map on [page 112].
The loss of the Maláhof rendered the further defence of the town impossible, and the following night the Russians blew up and destroyed such munitions of war as they could not remove from the bastions. Tolstoy was deputed to clear the Fifth and Sixth Bastions before they were abandoned to the Allies. When telling me this he added, 'The non-commissioned officers could have done the work just as well without me.' While the destruction was proceeding, the Russian forces crossed the Roadstead by a pontoon bridge which had been constructed during the siege. The town south of the Roadstead was abandoned, and the defenders established themselves on the North Side, where they remained till peace was concluded in February 1856.