* * *
On the North Side of the Roadstead, at the Star Fort, near noon, two seamen stood on the ‹telegraph’ mound; one of them, an officer, was looking at Sevastopol through the fixed telescope. Another officer, accompanied by a Cossack, had just ridden up to join him at the big Signal-post
The sun stood high and bright above the Roadstead, which, in the glad, warm light, was playing with its ships at anchor, with their sails and with the boats. The light breeze softly rustled among the dying leaves of the oak bushes near the ‹telegraph,’ filled the sails of the boats and rocked the waves. Sevastopol—still the same: with its unfinished church, its column, its quay, its green boulevard on the hill, its elegant library building, its azure creeks filled with masts, its picturesque aqueduct a
