So great was the slaughter in my own regiment, that though I was only a lieutenant, there seemed to be every prospect of my winning ere long the huge spurs won by Toby Purcell at the Boyne Water; but my turn of sharp service was coming; for, though I could not foresee it all then, Inkermann was yet to be fought, the Quarries to be contested, the Mamelon and Redan to be stormed, and Sebastopol itself had yet to fall. Had I shared in that battle by the Alma, I might have perished, and been lost to Estelle for ever; leaving her, perhaps, to be wooed and won by another, when I was dead and forgotten like the last year's snow. This reflection cooled my ardour a little; for love made me selfish, or disposed to be more economical of my person, after my enthusiasm and the fumes of the Buffs' champagne passed away; and now from Malta I wrote the first letter I had ever addressed to her, full of what the reader may imagine, and sent with it a suite of those delicate and beautiful gold filigree ornaments, for the manufacture of which the Maltese jewellers are so famed; and when I sealed my packet at the Clarendon in the Strada San Paola, I sighed while reflecting that I could receive no answer to it, with assurances of her love and sorrow, until after I had been face to face with those same Muscovites whom my comrades had hurled from the heights of the Alma. Three days after this intelligence arrived we quitted Malta, and had a fair and rapid run for the Dardanelles. The first morning found us, with many a consort full of troops, skirting, under easy sail, the barren-looking isle of Cerigo--of old, the fabled abode of the goddess of love, now the Botany Bay of the Ionians; its picturesque old town and fort encircled by a chain of bare, brown, and rugged mountains, whose peaks the rising sun was tipping with fire. As if to remind us that we were near the land of Minerva, and of the curious Ascalaphus, "Begat in Stygian shades On Orphnè, famed among Avernal maids," many little dusky owls perched on the yards and booms, where they permitted themselves to be caught. Ere long the Isthmus of Corinth came in sight--that long tract of rock connecting the bleak-looking Morea with the Grecian continent, and uniting two chains of lofty mountains, the classical names of which recalled the days of our school-boy tasks; thence on to Candia, the hills of which rose so pale and white from the deep indigo blue of the sea, that they seemed as if sheeted with the snow of an early winter; but when we drew nearer the shore, the land-wind wafted towards us the aromatic odour that arises from the rank luxuriance of the vast quantity of flowers and shrubs which there grow wild, and form food for the wild goats and hares.