But this wasn’t the Zouaves’ way. At the word of an NCO, tools were downed with a clang, weapons picked up, the prisoner half-pushed and half-carried forward and before you could say ‘Prince Napoleon’, the whole saturnine mob had bustled away without even the 95th’s sentries being properly posted. Whaley couldn’t swear to it, but as the tail of the column merged into the darkness of the trench, he thought he saw the flicker of a pipe being lit. Just let any of his lot cut capers like that.
Routine eventually returned. For such a forward position things were surprisingly quiet, with Sevastopol’s guns only occasionally booming and the Allies’ almost completely silent. A bomb-ketch in the harbour lofted a solitary round high over their heads at one point, lighting up the other Russian ships
