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At Feodosia we were sorely disappointed. All work there was already apportioned among Turks, Greeks, Georgians, tramps, and Russian peasants from Poltava and Smolensk, who had all arrived before us.
It was some time before reliable information reached us as to the extent of the damage sustained by the Russians, but when it came it was to the effect that several of our shells fell in the town, scattering the piles of coal on the wharves and creating general panic; the Poltava was so badly hit that she could not move, a shell blowing her bows open; the Petropavlosk and Pobieda were also hit, though not seriously; our old friend, the Askold, was hit on the waterline and set on fire, as was also the Diana; while the Novik, which had steamed out toward our fleet, was sent flying back with her rudder damaged, so that they had to steer her with her propellers.
Moreover, the roof is all overgrown with weeds: a willow, an oak, and two apple-trees lean their spreading branches against it. Through the trees peep little windows with carved and white-washed shutters, which project even into the street. A very fine man, Ivan Ivanovitch! The commissioner of Poltava knows him too. Dorosh Tarasovitch Pukhivotchka, when he leaves Khorola, always goes to his house.
Beyond the steppes which encompass the whole southern seacoast of Russia, from the Sea of Azof to the Danube, there spreads far inland a fertile region, embracing the whole or part of the Governments of Podolia, Poltava, Kharkof, Kief, Voronei, Don Cossacks, etc., including the districts of what was once known as the "Ukraine," which was for many years debatable land between Poland, Turkey, and Russia, and on which roamed the mongrel bands of the Cossacks, an uncouth population recruited among the many tramps and vagabonds from the northern provinces, mixed with all the races of men with whom they came into contact, settling here and there in new, loose, and almost lawless communities, organized as military colonies, and perpetually shifting their allegiance from one to the other of these three Powers, till the policy and good fortune of Peter the Great and Catherine II. extended the sway of Russia over the whole territory.
The Poltava was the sternmost ship in the Russian battle-line; and as though her shots had been a signal, the fire instantly ran right along the Russian line from rear to van.
So with excursions and alarums eastward by Poltava of glorious memory to the new "Glory of Catharine," her city of Ekaterinoslaff; and last of all through undulating steppes to the gorgeous palace piled upon the sand at Inkerman, where after banquetings a curtain falls away, and behold the pasteboard fortifications of Sebastopol! where a green-wood squadron anchored beneath them splutters forth its husky artillery.
But that same young gentleman, in the pea-green caftan, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, showed it to us. Thoma Grigorovitch was on the point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected that he had forgotten to wind thread about them and stick them together with wax, so he passed it over to me.
What should I want with a little wooden hut? said I. 'What do you ask for it? "'Fifty roubles, she squeaked. 'My son has written to me from Poltava. He says, "Sell the hut and come and live with me," so I'm just looking for a buyer. "'What did you say? I asked. 'Fifty roubles? "'Fifty roubles, barinya. Is it too much? "I was astonished. A house and land for fifty roubles.
On the following day and for a few days afterwards the howitzers lobbed shells upon the fleet, and the Pobieda, Poltava, Retvisan, and Peresviet were all struck, and their crews driven out of them, after which they were moved to the East harbour, where they were hidden from the sight of our gunners by the intervening high ground.
The early days of July marked the inauguration of the second series of riots, the so-called summer pogroms. The new conflagration started in the city of Pereyaslav, in the government of Poltava, which had not yet discarded its anti-Jewish Cossack traditions. Pereyaslav at that time harbored many fugitives from Kiev, who had escaped from the spring pogroms in that city.
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