“It is a convoy of wounded,” Jack said.  “I suppose we’re going to be taken into the interior.”

An officer, evidently in charge, saluted the boys as they came up, and said something in Russian.

They returned the salute.  He was a pleasant-looking fellow with light-blue eyes, and yellowish moustache and beard.  He looked at them, and then gave orders to a soldier, who entered the building, and returned with two peasants’ cloaks lined with sheep-skin, similar to the one he himself wore.

These were handed to them, and the midshipmen expressed their warmest gratitude to him; their meaning, if not their words, being clearly intelligible.

“These are splendid,” Jack said.  “They’ve got hoods too, to go over the head.  This is something like comfort.  I wish our poor fellows up above there had each got one.  It must be awful up on the plateau now.  Fancy twelve hours in the trenches, and then twelve hours in the tents, with no fires, and nothing but those thin great-coats, and scarcely anything to eat.  Now there’s a move.”

A strong party of soldiers came down, lifted the stretchers, and in a few minutes the whole convoy were at the water’s edge.  Other similar parties were already there, and alongside were a number of flat barges.  Upon these the invalids walked, or were carried, and the barges were then taken in tow by ships’ boats, and rowed across the harbor to the north side.

“I hope to goodness,” Jack said, looking up at the heights behind them, along which the lines of entrenchments were clearly visible against the white snow, “that our fellows won’t take it into their heads to have a shot at us.  From our battery we often amused ourselves by sending a shell from one of the big Lancaster guns down at the ships in the harbor.  But I never dreamed that I was likely to be a cockshy myself.”

The usual duel was going on between the batteries, and the puffs of white smoke rose from the dark line of trenches and drifted up unbroken across the deep blue of the still wintry sky.

But happily the passage of the flotilla of boats attracted no attention, and they soon arrived at the shore close to the work known as Battery No. 4.

Here they were landed.  Those who could not walk were lifted into carts, of which some hundreds stood ranged alongside.  The rest fell in on foot, and the procession started.  The boys, to their satisfaction, found that the officer who had given them the coats was in charge of a portion of the train, and as they started he stopped to speak a word or two to them, to which they replied in the most intelligible manner they could by offering him a cigar, which a flash of pleasure in his face at once showed to be a welcome present.

It took some time to get the long convoy in motion, for it consisted of some 700 or 800 carts and about 5,000 sick and wounded, of whom fully three-fourths were unable to walk.  It mounted to the plateau north of the harbor, wound along near the great north fort, and then across undulating land parallel with the sea.  They stopped for the night on the Katcha, where the allied army had turned off for their flank march to the southern side.