Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/443

 AITKNDIX. 4 1 3 coiiimaiiJcd llic Si)itlirc, aiul, as tlic .senior surveying officer, was usually entrusted with such delicate and im- jmrtant duties), remembers nothivg about a buoy ; hut I will not take upon myself to state positively that there was no buoy in question, as it is rot impossible that Sir Edmund Lyons may have entered upon a confidential agreement with the French Admiral that the duty of plac- ing a buoy on the coast selected by the Allied Admirals and Generals during the final reconnaissance on the 10th should be kept in the hands of the French, to be laid by them during the night preceding the landing, in order to prevent so significant a mark of the designed locality be- coming known to the enemy; but it is passing strange that Sir Edmund Lyons, in Avhose confidence I was, and who had entrusted the whole of the arrangements to me, shouhl have given me no instructions relative to it, if he attaclied importance to it. The Agamemnon, having weighed from Eupatoiia at 1 A.M., accompanied by the Sanspareil, Triton, and Spitlire, and followed by all the transports, Avas the advance ship, by a long way, of the Allied flotilla. Sir Edmund Lyon.?, in his eager desire to be in the van, pushed on to the southward of the beach, behind which lay Lake Kamishli, the southernmost of the three lakes marked on the maps, until we arrived ofi' the rocky headland lying between two sliallow bays, Avithin which lay the beaches, one having Lake Kamishli at the back of it (being that on Avhich the British ultimately landed), the other and more southern beach (on which the French landed) having no lake behind it, and being circumscribed in its limits. When off the Point, Sir Edmund Lyons, who was anxi- ously scanning the coast, desired me to stop the engines ; while thus hove-to, with the ship's head brought round to the N.E., or inshore, the French Admiral, heading his fleet, came up, and passing close to us, hailed to say we worn