they would share and share alike.

FOUR YOUNG RUSSIAN HEROES.

BY V. GRIBAYEDOFF.

[Illustration: Decorative T]

[Illustration: THE FOUR CABIN BOYS.]

The death last spring, at Astrakhan, in southeastern Russia, of Captain
Nicholas Novikoff, a retired naval officer, recalls some of the
principal events of the Crimean war. Novikoff was the last survivor of a
famous quartet of heroes. They were cabin-boys on board ships of the
Russian Black Sea fleet at the outbreak of the war against Turkey, in
1853, and their ages ranged at the time from twelve to fourteen years.
The other three were Vasili Rinitzik, Ivan Robert, and Sergius
Farasiouk.

The day after the Russian defeat at the Alma, on September 20, 1854,
Menschikoff, Commander-in-chief, sent peremptory orders to Admiral
Korniloff in Sebastopol, the great Crimean port of war, to sink in the
passage, at the entry of the "Roads," his five oldest line-of-battle
ships and two frigates, in order to prevent the Anglo-French fleet from
forcing an entrance. These orders were carried out on the night of
September 22d. The doomed vessels, pierced with holes, sank in the
roadstead in the presence of their crews, drawn up in parade formation
alongshore. Scarcely a dry eye watched the mournful event. The sailors
and marines who had humbled the Turk but a few months before in the
harbor of Sinope now bent their energies to the defense of Russia's
great stronghold. The men who had navigated and fought the Czar's
proudest men-of-war were assigned to the duty of throwing up
intrenchments, constructing subterranean mines, handling heavy siege
ordnance, and of performing numerous other tasks incident to warfare
ashore.

Among those brave defenders of the great fortress, our four young heroes
soon distinguished themselves by their splendid courage and devotion.
Their share in the defense of Sebastopol was a modest one, but it
consisted, nevertheless, of eleven months' arduous service in the
casemates of the Malakhoff and the Redan, during which time two of their
number were seriously disabled. Novikoff made the finest record of all
by creeping, unperceived during a fog, close to the advance ranks of the
British, opposite the Redan fort, late in June of 1855, and discovering
the pickets asleep. He promptly returned with the information, and this
enabled the besieged to make a successful sally, resulting in the
capture of forty Englishmen.

Farasiouk and Rinitzik were enga