been distributed on the heights south of Varna
Bay, and at various other points," he continued. "The first division,
consisting of the Guards and Highlanders, with two field-batteries, are
encamped at Gevreckler, a dreary common covered with a short, wiry
grass, one of the most desolate-looking plains I ever visited."

"I am sorry to hear that," said Jack, "for my brother Sidney is out
there. I must try if I can get the chance of paying him a visit. Poor
fellow! he was very anxious to come out, but he will find campaigning
very different sort of work from a review in Hyde Park."

"The chances are you are sent there on duty," observed Murray; "if you
go, remember me to Mackenzie, Gordon, and Douglas, of the
-- Highlanders. Heaven knows whether we shall meet again, for the
cholera, I am sorry to say, has got among them, and it is expected that
the allied army before long will have some hot work with the Russians,
who are now besieging Silistria. The place is holding out nobly, the
Turks being aided by those two gallant fellows, Captain Butler and
Lieutenant Nasmyth. The Russians have already lost several thousand men
before the place, but everybody believes that it must fall ere long, and
that the Russians will then march on Constantinople. We shall do our
best to stop them; and though we, of course, shall win, it will not be
without heavy loss."

"The fortune of war," said Jack. "I only hope that the Russian fleet
will soon sail out of Sebastopol and give us something to do. I have no
fear but that we shall lick them."

"Of course we shall," answered Murray; "and if Charley Napier can meet
their fleet in the Baltic and give them a drubbing too, they will have
had enough of it, and we shall shake hands and be friends."

Little did the young commanders, who thus easily settled the campaign,
dream of the prolonged and sanguinary struggle which was about to take
place. Jack and Archie remained on board to dine. The latter went back
to the _Tornado_ full of the news he had picked up, which he was as
ready to impart to Tom and his shipmates as they were anxious to hear
it.

"Look here," said Archie, as he sat on one side of the berth, with Tom
opposite to him, and most of the midshipmen surrounding the table, "I've
been studying the chart, and I think I've a pretty correct notion of the
position of the different places. Here's the Black Sea, which we'll
call an irregular oval running east and west, and at th