Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/263

 HIS DEFENCE OF SERASTOPOL. 233 Mackenzie's Farm, and so by swift inference chap. VIII. learnt that Sevastopol was about to be assailed from the south — assailed on its unprepared front ; When all at once, shifting his energies from the north to what now might well seem the doomed side of an inchoate fortress, the volun- teer Colonel of Sappers came over the Roadstead, came forbidding, repressing despair, and replacing it by the healthy alternative of work, work, work, immense work ; so that under his guidance the people of all sorts and conditions who had been left in Sebastopol— people having, it is true, for their main strength and main hope the superb 18,000 sailors of the landlocked fleet, commanded by their heroic Korniloff, addressed themselves to no less an object than that of defending Sebas- topol against the victorious armies of England and France, entered therefore at once on their task of constructing defences and pursued it under the eyes of the enemy; When, adding political courage to warlike valour, the heroic, devoted Admiral and the volunteer Colonel of Sappers proved able to form a resolve which to Russians a few days before would have seemed to overpass all the limits of human audacity, and without any sanction at all from their Czar or his Govern- ment, with none from the commander, Prince Mentschikoff, went on to break up — for State reasons — a vast imperial structure — a structure no less than that of the whole Black Sea Fleet, and then promptly applied it, applied it material