Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/392

348 THE WINTER TKOUBLES. CHAP, food — mainly bread and dried fruit — that best , 1__ would nourish their strength, and the most beloved sort of tobacco with which to rewai-d a day's toil, lie respected all their best feelings — except their love of repose — and proved able to make them get through the whole quantity of labour required. Soon, beside Kadikoi, on the road between camp and port, there sprang up wooden store- houses, and stacks of bales and cliests, and there, too, men observed as they passed that, under some motive force newly reaching Crim-Tartary, there had been generated a seething activity ; mules, horses, carts coming in laden, and finding men to unload them ; splendid sailors — the men of the Yacht — bringing strength and resource from on board ; men entrenching the ground to find shelter for hampers and bales ; interpreters lightly bridging the gulf between the Mind of the East and the Mind of the West ; strong bar- barians carrying loads ; and — propeller of all — his great eyes flaming with zeal, his miglity beard, laden or spangled like the bough of a cedar on Lebanon with whatever the skies might send down, whether snow, or sleet, or rain — an eagle-faced, vehement Englishman, commanding, warning, exhorting ; swooping down in vast seven - leagued boots through the waters and quagmires upon any one of his Mussulmans who, under cover of piety (when wanting a few moments of rest), stopped kneeling too long at his prayers. If any wayfarer, passing between camp and port, sought to learn what all the stir meant,