"My little sweetheart?"
"Yes: the old lady won't want her, and indeed we are all so happy to be friends again. As she gets older, Jack, she gets more forgiving and less severely aristocratic. Oh, she has a heart after all. She had tears in her eyes, Jack, when she bade me good-bye, loading me with tender messages to her own dear boy, as she still calls you."
"God bless her!"
"Yes, Jack, and Uncle Tom and I went to see the Malonies. Poor Peter is just the same, only he no longer plays on the street, for, through uncle's influence, he has adopted teaching music as a profession. The Malonies haven't altered a bit, and your old cat is still first favourite at the fireside. And Mrs. Malony told me tell you she prayed for you every morning and night of her life, and made Malony himself do the same under penalty of feeling the weight of the potato-masher in case of forgetting."
It was late that night before the doctor and Jack got back to the Gurnet; but nevertheless they found everything on board in an uproar, preparations being made to receive for passage a contingent of one of the regiments.
Storm and tempest delayed the sailing of the great armada for some time after it was quite ready. But at last it got to sea; and when once fairly away from the bay, and bearing up for the unknown land, then as Jack and Sturdy stood side by side on the quarter-deck, the brave lieutenant confessed that never in all his experience had he beheld so grand a spectacle.
The whole peninsula of the Crimea is hardly twice the size of Aberdeenshire or Yorks; and broadening out from the Isthmus of Perekop in the north, its whole length to Balaklava in the south ([vide map]) is not more than 120 miles as the crow flies. The entire population of the Crimean peninsula at the time of the invasion is said to have numbered about 220,000. But looking at a map, although it gives one a good idea of the lie of the land and water, is not very instructive as far as the features of the country are concerned; so, just in a sentence or two, let me tell you what these are like. The northern and the middle portions, then, are a kind of barren prairie land or steppes, and but sparsely inhabited by Tartars, who dwell in tumble-down little villages, and tend their flocks and herds. Not so peacefully, however, as do our Highland shepherds. Those Tartars may be simple in their ways, but they are wild and uncouth in nature. But proceeding southward from Perekop, we come to a far more beautiful or bountiful land. Mountains shelter it from the storms of the north, and here are hills and glens and wide smiling valleys with woods of pine and oak, under the shelter of which, and on the sunny braes, grow olive trees, the pomegranate, and even sub-tropical fruits, while green grass waves plentiful in spring and summer, and wild flowers are everywhere.
The southern end of this peninsula is hilly and cliffy. It is indented on the west by the great harbour of Sebastopol, and on the south by that of Balaklava. The capital is Simferopol, lying away to the north and east of the virtual capital, Sebastopol.
It was on the north and west of the peninsula that the allied armies landed and commenced their memorable march upon the great Russian stronghold. In the map you will note the streams or rivers they had to cross. The first is the Bulganak, and is but a "drumlie" rivulet or burn. The hills that range here with valleys between are from 400 to 500 feet high.
Well, the Bulganak flows west, so does the Alma seven miles further on, and also the Katcha and Belbek, the latter being nearest to Sebastopol. But the Tchernaya, I wish you to observe, runs north and west, and falls into the head of the harbour of the great stronghold.