Near five o’clock, and a soft warm morning wind blowing under a stainless sky. Gallopers from headquarters pass here and there with a quiet word, ‘Wake your men, and make no noise.’ There is no sound of any bugle call at that _reveille_, and the men silently arise, sit up and shake themselves, and mostly make their toilet by a simple process of eye-rubbing and the assumption of their headgear. Then the camp fires are lit here and there where a clump of officers gathers together over their morning tea and coffee. For thus early in the campaign all the luxuries of home are not abandoned or forgotten. Troop and company orderlies stroll down to the river, bearing buckets, and the rank and file munch their ration of ship’s biscuit. And before the simple meal is barely over, the stealthy word passes along the ranks, and a forward march begins, ghost-like in the dawn. Somewhat clumsily manoeuvred by their chiefs, the line, three or four miles in length, dips; down towards the river and crowds at a few chosen fording places. Then it spreads out again like an open fan, and marches up the further slope--the infantrymen dripping from the arm-pits downwards, and the handful of cavalry on the right of the British flank shining in the rising sun to the horses’ shoulders. Then a pause, and a long pause. Vine yards along the hill and spaces of field and farm, and scattered houses here and there, and on the left the village of Vourliouk, set aflame by the foe for some as yet undiscovered reason. The smoke goes circling up into the pure air, and a faint scent of burning is discernible. Still a mile and a half away on either side the great Redoubt, and in front of it there are cubes and oblongs which look like masses of grey stone, and might pass for such except that now and again they may be seen to move. These are the infantry troops of Russia, with whom our own men are soon to be in deadly conflict. The fields of Europe have heard no sounds of any cannon fired in anger since the last loud Sabbath of Waterloo shook down the spoilers of the Continent; but, unseen at this distance, the guns which line that wrinkle of the hill above there are charged to the throat, and there are resolute men behind them.