One copy of the epistle, however--such as it was--signed by General Baraguay d’Hilliers, was intrusted to a French officer, commissioned to deliver it to Prince Menschikoff in person. That officer embarked on board H. M. S. _Retribution_, whose captain (Drummond), with the copy bearing Lord Redcliffe’s signature, taking advantage of a dense fog, and without any pilot, boldly steamed into the very harbor of Sebastopol. Two shots were fired as a signal to bring to, but they were disregarded; whereupon a Russian officer, in a state of considerable excitement, hailed the frigate from a boat, emphatically announcing that no vessel of war could be permitted to enter the harbor, and that consequently the _Retribution_ must forthwith retire. This requisition Captain Drummond refused to comply with until the object of his mission had been accomplished. He was then informed that the Governor was not in Sebastopol. The commander of the _Retribution_ inquired for the deputy-governor, to whom he delivered his despatches; and it is said that this unfortunate officer was degraded to the ranks for permitting an English man-of-war to make her way without opposition into a port so jealously guarded. While the parley between the English commander and the deputy-governor was going on, the officers of the _Retribution_, by the aid of cameras and pencils, took a series of sketches of the works of Sebastopol, and thus made themselves masters of all the information which the Russians had any interest in concealing. On the 6th January, just as the allied fleets had taken possession of the Black Sea in order to retain a “material guarantee” equivalent to that of the Wallachian provinces, so unwarrantably seized by the Czar, the army of Abdul Medjid on the Danube was preparing to prove itself worthy of the important alliance he had just concluded. His soldiers had shown well enough at Sinope that they knew how to die: at Citate they satisfied Europe that they knew how to fight. Though, for the most part, inexperienced levies, they were more than a match for the veterans of the Czar, many of whom had for years past been inured to hard fighting in the Caucasus, while many more had seen something of warfare in the Hungarian campaign. The Russians having determined to attack Kalafat, where Achmet Pacha had resolved to establish himself in force, began to manœuvre so as to reduce within the narrowest limits the Ottoman position: they threw up also a considerable number of field-works, so as to command almost every approach. Achmet Pacha felt that the moment had arrived when it was incumbent upon him to act with vigor, if he did not wish to break the spirit or lower the _morale_ of his men. Till the last moment, however, he divulged his plans to no one; nor did he, till the hour had arrived, intimate his intention of giving battle at Citate, the nearest point to the enemy’s lines.