Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/104

74 OPERATIONS IN THE SEA OK AZOF. CHAP. IV. The good seamanship manifested by the French md the English Buckley, who in a four - oared gig, accom- panied by Mr Henry Cooper, boatswain, and manned by volunteers, repeatedly landed and fired the stores and Government buildings. By 3 o'clock in the afternoon, all the long ranges of stores of grain, planks and tar, and the vessels on the stocks, were in a blaze, as were also the Custom-house and other Government buildings. The destruction included a Russian war- schooner, with also a Russian guardship ; but it was by the enemy's own hands that that last vessel perished.( 5 ) So great was the skill exerted by the seamen both English and French, that though operating for three days amid shoals of vast extent, they did not from the first to the last encounter a single mishap. From the feebleness of the Russian defence it resulted that the Allies were enabled to achieve their whole object without either inflicting any serious loss, or themselves losing even one life. They only lost one marine wounded ; the Russians losing one soldier killed, and twelve more or less slightly wounded. The enemy's rejection of the summons had been proudly, defiantly worded ; but the sacrifice it involved was left to fall much more severely on hapless non-combatants than on that newly reinforced body of from three to four thousand soldiers which had feebly resisted the landing, and had hardly, if at all, interfered with the steady work of destruction effected under their eyes.