Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/234

204 EFFECT PRODUCED BY THE Day by day the two armies at Varna were moved by fitful tidings of a conflict iu which, though it raged within earshot, they were suf- fered to take no part. At first, few men har- boured the thought that, without deliverance brought by a relieving force, a humble Turkish fortress would be able to hold out against the col- lected strength of Russia and the most renowned of her Generals. Soon, it was known that, of their own free will and humour, two young English- men — Captain Butler of the Ceylon Pdfles, and Lieutenant Nasrayth of the East India Company's Service — had thrown themselves into the place, and were exercising a strange mastery over the garrison. On one of the hills overlooking the town there was a seam of earth which, as though it were a kind of low fence designed and thrown up by a peasant, passed along three sides of the slope in a doubtful meandering course. This was the earthwork which soon became famous in Europe. It was called the Arab Tabia. The work was one of a slight and rude sort ; but the ground it stood on was judged to be needful to the be- siegers, and, at almost any cost of life to his ])eople, Prince Paskievitch resolved to seize it. ]3y diligent fighting on the hill-side — by sapping close up to the ditch — by springing mines which more than once blew in the counterscarp and levelled the parapet — by storming it in the day- time — by storming it at niglit — the Russians strove hard to carry the work ; but when they sprang a mine, they ever found that behind the