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STATE BEFORE THE HURRICANE. 141 shall see dwindling down to a shadow of its chap. former self under stress of work cruelly exces- '. — sive, under stress of cold, wet, and hardship, and of sickness resulting from want, but sickness besides of a kind which no human care could ward off; for already — and I speak as from nearly the middle of November — that fell cholera which three weeks before had only been ' lingering ' was again in new strength — again making fatal ravages.(^^) Under these conditions the Allied armies, still engaged day and night in a siege which they could not remit, held fast the bleak heights of- the Chersonese, and there — uncomplaining and loval — awaited the close grasp of winter.
