So after a few days, with a tent provided for her, she rode in a baggage waggon towards Sebastopol. Cholera had begun again badly. The fillip which the idea of campaigning and free fighting had given to men jaded by hot weather and the discomforts of Varna was passing off. As they neared the Russian town supplies were less easily obtainable, and the commissariat was conspicuous by its inefficiency. The army, meanwhile, starting on the 23rd, had found itself brought up seriously at the next river. The enemy had established a work at the entrance which made it impossible to use the bay, as had been hoped, for a base. There was nothing for it but to change plans and act promptly. And here, mercifully, was no delay, no mistakes. Forsaking the seacoast the whole force plunged boldly into the mountains, marching by compass, without road, without guides. Much of the way lay through dense forest--there was no water; but, heartened up by a small brush with a wandering division of the enemy, the men struggled on cheerful as ever, up hill, down dale, during a long and toilsome march from dawn till after nightfall on the 25th. But then came solace. On the sea-coast below them--secure, unprepared--lay the town and harbour of Balaklava, seven miles to the east of Sebastopol. They had circumvented the enemy, they had taken him round the corner! But there must be no cheering. Quiet as mice they lay among the barberry scrub, waiting for the dawn of the 26th. And then there was nothing to be done save to walk down and take possession--take possession of both sea and land, for, punctual to the moment, her Majesty's ship _Agamemnon_ sailed into the harbour, decks clear, guns ready for action--a stroke of luck due to young Maxse who, arriving at the Commander-in-Chief's with despatches the evening before, volunteered to brave the forest again by night and tell his Admiral to come round as sharp as he could. So when the hospital tents and such medical stores as there were arrived from Kalamita Beach they found the troops elated and pleased with their new quarters. As is generally the way after a move, cholera abated, almost disappeared, and for a time the weather was good. Trench work began at once, yet progressed but slowly. Whether, as some say, from lack of implements or from slackness in command, the French had placed thirty-three siege guns before the English had finished their fifteenth; and the doctor, coming in from a long round, would shake his head and say that the business would be a longer one than people thought. And what was to be done with winter coming on--blankets wearing out, a shortage of drugs, and the very ambulance-waggons still lying forgotten on Kalamita Beach? He used to watch the ships sailing in so gaily to the harbour and say calmly, "I wonder what filth, what fraud, they bring?"