First day’s work in the lodgment—Improviséd grenades—Polish fusilier—Capture of the third rifle pit—Preliminary incidents connected with it—Saps issuing from the pits—No. 13 sand-bag battery—No. 9 battery, left attack—Building a magazine in day-time—Constancy of sappers in the trenches—But little relief afforded them—Apparent want of ingenuity in their camp arrangements—Reason why so few sappers die—Their miserable condition—Regimen; its effects—Care of the baggage animals—The means employed to preserve them becomes a vexed question—Rifle holes—No. 11 battery, left attack—Generals’ and engineers’ huts—Diversified engagements of the sappers—Death of Lieutenant Carter—Progress of the works—Wells—Repairing the advance saps after a sortie—Expedition to the sea of Azoff—Storms of rain, and consequent difficulties in carrying on the works—Sortie—Effects of the rain—Endurance of the men exposed to it—Casualties.

Twenty armed men from the 7th foot were appointed to labour in the captured pits on the 20th April, into which for about thirty yards they crawled on their hands and knees. Sergeant Joseph Morant was with them, so also was Lieutenant Sheehy, of the 64th, assistant-engineer, who directed their exertions. Many of the gabions had only been partly filled the previous night, and spaces of a few inches occurred here and there between the baskets. Barely had the linesmen placed their muskets at the back of the trench, when a provoking fire from the near pit and quarries, knocked over four or five of their number. Unaccustomed to work in such slight cover, very little progress was made in improving the trench, and Lieutenant Sheehy withdrew the men. Waiting a short time, twelve sappers arrived; and with four or six volunteers from the 7th regiment, the work in the approach was resumed. In four hours much had been done to strengthen it, and the parapet, in great part, was made defensible with banquettes. Finding that the trenchmen pertinaciously held to their work, the Russians tried the effect on them of a couple of great guns. The first rounds pitched high; but the next, better aimed, hurled the gabions from the trace, and dividing the parapet by an ugly chasm, separated the workmen into two parts. Those in the left of the pit, struck with stones and half blinded with sand, not seeing their danger, were about to join the main body by crossing the gap; but the warning of their comrades stopped their precipitation and confined them for a time behind a few feet of insecure revetment. Had they attempted to move, not a man would have escaped, for the muzzles of the Russian rifles, only a few yards off, would have struck them down. Hot as was the place, the sappers and volunteers continued to work, and the breach quickly filled up with sand-bags, soon extricated the men at the end of the zigzag from hazards to which less alacrity and courage would have committed them. So jealous was the enemy of any progress in this quarter, it was not an easy, matter to throw a few shovels-full of earth over the parapet without a visit from a pair of round shot. That so little harm was done to the workmen was due to the nearness of a Russian screen to the captured pit. Generally the practice was high. To have struck the new approach and not the Russian pit, would have been a nice achievement in gunnery. At last Captain Browne of the engineers, removed the line party, but left the sappers at the end of the trench with orders not to throw anything over the parapet. No exertion being now visible to the enemy, the fire from screen, quarry, and fortress was, in great part, discontinued, and the sappers quietly improved the revetment till nightfall, when another party relieved them.^[180]

Before daylight on the morning of the 21st, the furthest screen in the Russian series, about fourteen yards in front of the captured pits, was taken by a detachment of 100 men from the guard of the trenches, under an adjutant, accompanied by a small band of twelve volunteers as a working party consisting of four men of the 19th regiment, four of the 90th, and three of the sappers, under the direction of corporal George Cann of the 7th company. The covering party was directed not to fire but to use the bayonet. All having mustered on the open, the adjutant gave the word to advance. On went the stormers at the charge, and jumping into the screen, which fortunately had been vacated, they took possession of it unassailed by a single shot. Quietly the destroying party set to work, and before returning to the trenches, completely uprooted the ambuscade. The parapet had been formed of discarded casks, crested with large sand-bags made of old sails, specimens of which were brought away by the men to show the expedients adopted for Russian protection. The names of the sappers who shared in the sortie were lance-corporal William J. Lendrim, and privates William Harvey and Alexander Hosie.

This service will bear a little elucidation. At dusk the previous evening, the four sappers went into the trench issuing from the first captured pit, to reconnoitre. Each selected his own place to look out, but Harvey having crawled round the head of the sap on all fours, watched for a few minutes the operations in front. The Russians were busy in the screen, and seeing one more bold than the rest strengthening the parapet, Harvey remarked, as he returned to the trench, it was strange that the sentry, a man of the 88th, did not pick him off. He was a Milesian was the 88th man, and a good deal irate to think that, though he felt sure he could lessen the number in the pit by at least the head which dared now and then to overlook the parapet, he was under orders not to fire: but when he learned from Harvey that the pit was to be captured in the morning, the sentry, forgetting his orders, discharged a bullet at the Russian, and thus brought on a fire which produced a number of casualties. Taking up the arms of a wounded man, Harvey, mounting the parapet with others, blazed away till he was called from the summit by Lieut.-Colonel Tylden to answer for his conduct in bringing an unnecessary fire of musketry on the sap. He had been reported by the officer of the line on duty there as the cause of it; but a few words of explanation made clear the misunderstanding, and Harvey, the first to volunteer for the assault, was so conspicuous in his exertions to raze the screen, that he was subsequently distinguished by a medal for gallant behaviour, and received a gratuity of five pounds. It was well that the firing took place as it did, for to its warmth is no doubt attributable the evacuation of the pit without a hand-to-hand encounter.

It was not long before these pits were incorporated with the besiegers’ works by communications hastily thrown up and revetted despite the accurate firing of the enemy’s riflemen; and they held so prominent a place in the tactics of the engineers, that in an after period they formed the outlet for a sortie upon the celebrated quarries. A flying sap from the screens was early extended to the left as far as the rim of the hill overlooking the Woronzoff road, and again to the right, in line with a row of pits still possessed by the Russians, and which run along the whole extent of the quarries. The cover in the lodgment was almost made impenetrable by the sappers who erected a wall of gabions, sand-bags and stones intermixed, as far as the very edge of the ridge.

On the right attack, No. 13 battery for four guns was finished and armed on the night of the 21st April. It was situated to the left of the second parallel near the Woronzoff ravine. Between eight and ten thousand sand-bags swelled its dimensions into a noble field construction. The men of the corps who gave it form from the engineer’s trace, finished it off with something like artistic neatness. The defences of the battery were improved by the addition of lock traverses across the boyau on its left. This was perhaps the first battery built during the siege entirely of sand-bags; and though well ploughed with shot and shell, it made a fair resistance. Its bags frequently burst, and gaps were often made in its puffed-up features, while the pent-up sand was showered over the battery as if winnowed by the wind. There was no lack of the reliable sand-bag, however, and the damages sustained were always expeditiously repaired.

During the same night the embrasures of No. 9 battery on the left attack were nearly all cut through by the sappers and the openings covered up again with masks before daylight. By the 23rd, at night, the remaining mouths were opened and the cheeks of all were flattened by a few parting plashes of the spade. Grim guns occupied the spaces, and at the proper moment No. 9 co-operated with the other works in shelling the enemy’s defences. In the formation of the battery, corporal Robert Hanson of the 7th company, displayed great zeal and ability in superintending a detachment of the 50th regiment, of whose exertions more than once creditable mention was made.

So well in range was No. 10 battery on the left attack it was hazardous to venture into it. Still it was necessary to furnish it quickly with a magazine. To obtain the chance of executing the work in day-time, a temporary blind of sand-bags was thrown up in front of the site during the night, and the sapper carpenters and miners took their stations behind the screen at dawn. The delving and blasting for a durable foundation were done in broad daylight; then up went the frame, and the sheeting followed, covered for a roof with timbers, sand-bags, and earth; and in a few days, without casualty among the builders, the magazine was completed.

Whatever accidents or failures in arrangements took place with the line contingents by which they were late for the trenches or not provided, the sappers always appeared in the lines and turned to the work with great ardour. As an instance, it may be mentioned, that the trench party of twenty-eight sappers were, on the 22nd April, three hours in the batteries before the morning relief arrived, during which, besides attending to various matters of essential detail, they levelled two crumbling embrasures in the 21-gun battery, and rebuilt them for action with stout revetments in little more than two hours.

Too inexorable was the siege to allow any relaxation in the development of the lines, and every day added to the accumulation of posts and duties which called for the anxious attention and valorous exertions of the engineers. The officers were severely wrought and the casualties among them spoke of their labours and exposure. The sappers likewise were greatly overtasked. Some nights they were in the trenches as long as the darkness lasted, and then only left to repeat their long vigils the ensuing night. Next day, perhaps, they would be permitted to rest for a few hours, when at noon some camp duty, some hutting or draining, the making of fascines, or the execution of a tedious round of et cetera, absorbed the remaining portion of the day. The approaching night or the next, again saw them at work in the far-spreading trenches. For several months this was their constant routine, when, happily, reinforcements arriving, they were, in degree, relieved from an excess of fatigue and watchfulness which, were it not for their hardihood, would have considerably diminished their weak files.

It has been remarked that the sappers exhibited less ingenuity and application of resource in their camp arrangements than many regiments in the Crimea. Much skill was shown by some corps in the use of contrivances and rural expedients for rendering their locations comfortable within, and pleasing and picturesque without. All these devices were strangely absent among the sappers. Oddly enough this seems; but it is easily accounted for by the fact, that the men, more constantly at work than other troops, were too tired to seek for superfluous comforts when ordinary ones satisfied their few wants. Indeed they had no leisure to busy themselves about extraneous conveniences.^[181]

Overworked as the linesmen were, the regiments possessed facilities for carrying out domestic minutiæ which wore off the rougher asperities of a trying campaign. To most of them washermen were appointed who attended to the concerns of the regimental laundry and ensured to the men the comfort of wearing clean linen. Such was not the good fortune of the sappers. Every man was wanted for some absolutely pressing duty, and it was only when the caprices of chance threw in their way a vagrant interval that they could seek to afford themselves the companionship of a well-washed shirt. From this cause it can occasion no wonder that the men were often foul and distressed by vermin. In this condition there were not a few who would steal at times into some cave to relieve themselves in silence of the loathsome brood. No perseverance, however, was sufficient to free them from the creeping things which swarmed in every seam and around every fretted hole of their threadbare clothes. So extreme was this discomfort felt by many poor fellows, that a general officer of the corps, who took great interest in the feeble and attenuated invalids as they landed at Portsmouth from the Crimea, was constrained officially to represent the pitiable state in which he found them. Comparatively of all the troops they were the most miserable and sympathising with their misfortunes, the general and his benevolent lady generously supplied the sufferers with clean linen and apparel.

Then, again, though sufficient food was afforded them, it was not of that description and variety to give the pioneer adequate strength and cheerfulness to bear up against his depressing toils. Hard biscuit, salt beef and pork formed the staff of the military regimen. Now and then they enjoyed the luxury of tasting fresh meat. None of the sappers at this time could command sufficient relief from front duty to master the mysteries of the cuisine so as to manufacture anything like a relishable meal. This was left as an achievement for after times when the inimitable Soyer superintended the military kitchens. Many hardy men at last broke up; and one hale fellow—the type of many more—in alluding to his trials on account of the rations, observed, “My teeth are the only parts that are failing me!” Hardship was unequal to make an inroad upon that strong man’s frame, but flinty biscuit and tough beef spoiled the efficiency of an apparatus which, under other circumstances, might have stood his need for half a century. He then added, “all the money I can get goes for soft bread to ease my teeth and mitigate the aching of my jaws. The French come round with it almost every day, and we give 2s. 6d. and sometimes 3s. for a three-pound loaf!” Those indeed were hard times and the prices such as would be excessive in a famine.

If there were reason to complain of the want of fresh meat none could be alleged against the quantities of rations supplied. While the troops were suffering great privations, the sappers always had full provisions and “when warm clothing was available for them it was brought up without delay.” This arose from the mules furnished for the engineer field service having been planked up in sheds at Balaklava in the early campaign and carefully attended to.^[182] In the fatal winter that followed, the engineer mules were thus protected from its rigours, while the unsheltered baggage animals of different corps, and even the troop horses, fell dead in frightful numbers at their tethers. The great storm of November, 1854, rendered the animals almost powerless and the little strength they possessed wholly gave way when the slightest pressure was applied to derive from their employment any urgent assistance. Nothing on the other hand baffled the few mules attached to the engineer department but the conveyance of the huts; and this was a service so extremely heavy, it was utterly beyond their capabilities. To corporal Matthew Stevens was attributed the preservation of the engineer transport stud. He had with him a small party of sappers who soon turned themselves into efficient drivers, and emulating the energy and care of the corporal, assisted to produce a result which became a striking incident of the campaign.^[183]

So effective an adjunct of the siege was the rifle screen, that on the left attack four pits commanding the Woronzoff ravine were commenced in front of the second parallel on the night of the 22nd April and daily additions were made to the number. A fortnight later other pits in the same attack were made extending from the right of the second parallel to the front of the third, and also from the right flank of No. 8 battery. The chain consisted of forty holes spotting the ground with light troops in snug and commanding positions. These were commenced by Lieutenant C. G. Gordon of the engineers, with a force of 180 linesmen and a proportion of 24 sappers who were that night allotted for the works. In time the pits became an enlarged item in the system of attack, and formed, occasionally, the starting points from which new zigzags or parallels were struck out. Old pits, moreover, which had been abandoned by the Russians—as the besiegers’ works compressed their circumvallation—were taken advantage of and turned against them.

Corporal John Landrey, a very good sapper, was noticed for his zeal and intelligence in leading and instructing the working parties on the 24th, and sergeant Benjamin Castledine, while visiting a working party in the extended parallel to the right of the mortar battery on Gordon’s attack, received a bullet wound in the hand.

Battery No. 11 for seven guns was begun in the night of the 27th on a rocky eminence, somewhat isolated though imposing, to the left of the second parallel. Ground was broken by 300 of the line and 50 seamen with as many sappers as could be taken out of 35 detailed that night for the trenches of the left attack. Captain Porter had the direction of the work. All his arrangements were so admirably carried out, that the parapet—256 long—was risen to a height of six feet, and the two right gun portions and epaulment, worked as a half sunken battery, had a parapet nearly twelve feet thick revetted with sand-bags. Nor was this all; the remaining portion of the battery, shaped after the elevated form, was revetted partly with casks and partly with gabions, and obtained a thickness varying from seven to nine feet. Receiving no little access of spirit from the joyous exertions of the happy sailors, the men worked hard and excellently, but at the period of relief they left the battery jaded and exhausted. Sergeant Jarvis, and lance-corporals Hanson, J. T. Collins, and Jenkins of the sappers, acquired the credit of having laboured splendidly, which was recorded to their honour in the orders of Major-General Jones. A constant and irritating fire was directed against the workmen the greater part of the night, but the result when summed up, was one slight wound, and the smashing of six stands of arms.

A few nights later Captain Armit gave orders for the earth of the battery to be thrown well to the front. With a manner less absolute than persuasive, Sergeant Drew, who was in charge, requested the workmen to go on the parapet for the purpose, but they refused, alleging, “it was sappers’ work.” The moon was shining bright in the rear, baring the battery to Russian fire and rendering the duty anything but inviting. Taking Rowland Hill’s plan of doing the work himself when his servants quarrelled about their legitimate portions, the sergeant laid aside his jacket and pushing on the merlon toiled away like a navvy. Distributed to various details of the battery, the sappers hearing that the working party had declined to assist, left their several tasks and joined the sergeant. This was more than a brave rifleman could well bear, and with an example that none of the workmen cared to imitate, he attempted to take his place with the shovellers; but a sapper who happened to be below, altogether averse to accepting any services which seemed to spring from other considerations than duty, pulled the rifleman down, observing, in tones of sarcastic resentment, “that, as the work was, according to the opinions of the party, purely sappers’ work, none but sappers ought to share in the credit of its execution.” The strengthening of the merlon, therefore, that night, with heavy discharges of shot and some shell directed against it, was wholly carried out by sergeant Drew and his sappers.

Before the end of April, a few men of the corps assisted by working parties completed a hut for the general officer of the trenches on the right attack with stout timbers and sheeting and gave it as much proof with sand-bags and earth as practicable. A similar chamber was reared soon after for the general on the left. Considering its position it was a cozy quarter in the storm, and its social character was enhanced by the introduction of an old door and a glazed window screened from fire by a traverse. All that it wanted was a stove and the wreathing smoke from a chimney-pot to make it a palace for a peasant.

The engineer hovel of the left attack—used as an office by each succeeding engineer as he took possession of the trenches—exhibited some points of needy refinement; for it not only possessed a door and a glazed sash, but a stove with a pipe leading through the splinter proof roof which boasted a covering of asphalted felt! From a sunken foundation the hut rose up under a broad parapet in the first parallel between Nos. 1 and 2 batteries, and was built chiefly of sand-bags with an interior nearly ten feet square fitted with the bare conveniences of seats and a desk—all, however, sufficiently rough to identify the structure with the rigours of a stern siege. In the area in front of the hut was a sort of engineer depôt from whence the tools and materials were distributed to the working parties.

Meanwhile the sappers in small batches or in ones and twos were lost among the military operatives, distinguished by the badge of a piece of tracing tape around their caps. Usually in the 21-gun battery were found the greatest number and half a brigade or so of selected men could be counted in each of the new batteries on the right attack. These run from 10 to 14. On Greenhill the works also claimed a share of sapper labour, but in the batteries numbered 10 and 11 on the left, the parties, as far as strength was concerned, were more ostentatious.

To be a little precise, let a survey of their engagements be undertaken. Look first among the embrasures, and there, ant-like, is seen an isolated red-coat coolly pegging up hides or fixing gabions, while two or three carpenters, with upturned sleeves, are discovered crouching low, fixing platforms or renewing sleepers and fighting bolts. Go next to the caves and call—“Sapper?” One immediately emerges from its murkiness, spade in hand, with begrimed face and dishevelled beard, to show the quality of his exertions. Step to the saps right and left, and in each on bended knee with whirling pick and cap well down is traced the sapper. To his sturdy efforts the earth yields and the gabion soon is filled. Watch him as he goes ahead with cautious crawl and daringly places another basket on the line. How many rifle balls, how many shots fly past, few can tell; but on he urges as if nothing had occurred, and perhaps the next discharge kills him. Steal now along the trench to its advanced limit, and there is seen a group of busy miners black with gunpowder in shallow depths, blasting the rock to deepen the approach and strengthen the cover. How well they know their art. Not a head is seen above the young parapet and scarcely that of a hammer; but when a strong blow is required, up it goes and the sun sparkling on the burnished steel gives a mark to the enemy. Bullets from the screens are quickly fired and an occasional shot trundles in among them, but undauntedly they proceed, watchful as dogs, till at last the mine explodes. A volume of vapour affords another indication of their activity to the enemy. Shot and shell plunge on and tear up the ground, but the miners have flown to a distance and quietly await the cessation of the fire to resume their tasks. Walk over to the sailors’ battery where surely none but seamen may be seen. There, in truth, the blue jackets are in droves with their droll sayings and unsteady gait; but press forward. “Is that a marine?” “No, it’s a sapper trimming the parapet.” There, too, is another tricing up the flaccid cheeks of an embrasure; and beyond is a third giving position to platforms for sea-service mortars or naval guns. Go round that traverse: the universal man is there completing it; another is strengthening the parapet; another repairing the merlon; a fourth is in the right epaulment; a fifth in the left; a sixth is elsewhere constructing loopholes with barrels; others are revetting the works with tubs, casks, gabions, and hide-bags, while a couple of broad-backed miners are burrowing underground and driving a tunnel into the jaws of some convenient cavern. The tour is incomplete without a visit to the pits. Come with the night relief and see them. Jump into that screen; there again is the sapper enlarging loopholes or picking the rock to sink the pit. Plunge into the next one: there too is the military Tonson improving the cover with stones while the eager riflemen jostle him as they press forward to get a chance shot at some unwary Russian. Enter now the 21-gun battery where four magazines are rebuilding. The sappers are quite at home raising the frames by the sickly beams of a feeble siege lamp; but look, a flying stone has just broken the horn and the wind has extinguished the flame. Yet, undiscouraged, the sappers work away by feeling the points and bases of their timbers. Go where you will, in battery, trench, or mine, a sapper is the centre of each party toiling at his hazardous vocation through the long dark night. Daylight has returned. “What can that moaning noise be?” A 13-inch shell has dashed against a magazine and blown it up! The gunners are maimed, suffocated, or killed! and the timbers are either carried away or left charred and tottering on the rock. Run and see the effect. The magazine is a ruin, the ground smokes and burns, and the dead and mutilated are being borne away; but there again are the sappers tearing through the smouldering frames and fallen planks, examining the extent of the disaster and preparing for the restoration. “These men tho’ few in number seem everywhere and in everything. What can be their motto?” “Ubique quo fas et gloria ducunt!” “That accounts for it.”

At midnight on the 2nd May, a sapper was putting a new face to the embrasure of the flank gun in No. 8 battery, on the left attack, when a round shot ploughed the crest of the parapet on its right flank and struck down Lieutenant Carter of the engineers, killing at the same moment Lieutenant Curtis of the 46th regiment. The flying sand bespattered the workman but he was else unhurt. Quitting the embrasure, he sought by his attention to lighten, if possible, the mortal throes of his officer. In a few moments all was over, and the sapper, with grave sympathy, bore away the body of that brave young man to the camp.

With the morning relief of the 3rd, 60 sappers were sent to the trenches, who in addition to the duty of overseers laid platforms in No. 14 and the 21-gun batteries. Sergeant Philip Morant, while superintending on the right, was slightly wounded in the shoulder by a rifle bullet, which, being almost spent, bounded back after delivering the blow. This was his first day in the trenches. No. 1 battery on the left attack, which was much cut up, was completely renovated by thirteen sappers; and four miners performed good service in blasting a communication to the ammunition caves. In the ensuing night the advance boyau to rifle-pit on the right attack was prolonged and strengthened, and a strong party of the corps worked with acknowledged energy in constructing No. 12 mortar battery on the left. Some also were with a line party adding solidity to the broad parapet of No. 8 battery, who, however, were subsequently removed, as the clear moon, shining in a cerulean sky, exposed the men to an annoying fire of grape from the Redan. Two nights later, there were forty-three of the corps in the trenches; twenty being scattered in the right works, and twenty-three in the left. A sortie on the left sap of the Gordon attack interrupted the operations, but the enemy was driven back without effecting any serious detriment to the works. A heavy fire of shells was also directed against the 21-gun battery, and though the casualties for the night amounted to 4 killed, 18 wounded, and 2 missing, none of the sappers were touched. At the time of the attack eight rank and file of the corps were in No. 14 battery repairing embrasures, 1 in the second parallel making loop-holes and patching up the parapet, 2 in No. 8 battery replacing dislodged sand-bags, and 2 in the 21-gun battery filling up the chasms in the fourteenth embrasure and altering the features of the twentieth.

About an hour after midnight on the 8th, sergeant Drew had dismissed a working party under charge of second-corporal Fraser employed in forming rifle-pits in advance of the third parallel. Retiring together, they resolved to visit the caves known by the name of the “Ovens,” then the post of the advanced picquet, to see a communication, which had been much talked of by the sappers, cut through the solid rock by private Simon Williams, by which an unexposed track was open from cave to cave. They were dressed at the time in Mackintoshes, fur caps, and long boots. The officer in charge of the picquet at the “Ovens,” apparently unaware that works were in progress in his front, was struck with the intrusion of the visitors and captured them as spies. Speaking good English was no proof they were not Russians, and accordingly they were sent to the field-officer of the trenches, Lord West, under a strong sergeant’s escort. Trying to guide it by a nearer way than the one it was taking, was received as a certain indication of their character, for the guard fancied “the spies” were planning to beguile them into Sebastopol. Indeed they had some misgiving that the two sappers were a couple of clever desperadoes, ready for any cruel work that their evil natures might prompt them to perpetrate. The escort therefore marched, brimful of caution, with the prisoners, and were only too glad, on reaching the goal, to be rid of such a pair of suspicious adventurers. On being confronted with his lordship, he asked them many searching queries, to which they gave remarkably accurate replies; but the question of their identity was at length settled by Captain Armit, the engineer officer on duty for the night who had just returned from the rifle-pits by another route. Of course they were at once released, and many a good laugh was enjoyed at the pardonable blunder of capturing two honest sappers as Russian spies.

Water in the trenches had now become scarce; indeed, the cisterns in the 21-gun battery, formed of barrels, were dry. This gave rise to the prudent precaution of sending the working parties to the lines with full canteens. New wells were immediately sunk by the sappers in the quarries of the 21-gun battery, and cans, barrels, and metal powder cases deposited in promising spots along the parallels, to allure the springs to the desired outlets. Very limited was the area for exploring, and the water therefore was never sufficiently plentiful to relieve the workmen from the necessity of filling their water-bottles prior to entering the batteries. About a fortnight later, the well in the second parallel on the right attack yielded a fair supply. It was a sort of pool of Siloam for the weary and thirsty, and to shield them from casualty in their pilgrimage to it, the assiduous efforts of 4 sappers and 20 linesmen threw up a parapet with sufficient altitude, to afford them convenient shelter.

During the darkness of the 9th, a sortie was made by the Russians which was gallantly repulsed by the guard of the trenches on the right. The Russians left many dead on the field, while the casualties among the besiegers did not exceed 13 wounded. There were 20 sappers in the right works at the time, who, as soon as the sortie terminated, were doubled up to the left advance saps, and before the coming relief, replaced the gabions and sand-bags which had been capsized and plugged up all the gaps and shot-holes in the parapets. That night a new communication was begun from the second parallel to the right advanced trench. Eight sappers were employed in heading the sap and lodging the gabions, of which no less than 150 were firmly fixed; and the cover obtained was such that the exertions of the workmen were justly praised. The work was on the slope of a hill exposed to an oblique fire; and though difficult to form the parapet at the extremity from the presence of rock, it yielded at length to perseverance which was as constant as intrepid.

The tenth company under Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon and Major Stanton of the engineers, were afloat in the ‘William Jackson,’ with the expedition to the Sea of Azof from the 3rd to the 8th of May. Without attempting operations, the troops were suddenly recalled, and landing at Balaklava on the 8th, the sapper contingent marched two days later to their old places in the trenches.

Rain set in on the night of the 10th and turned the lines into wet ditches. Working parties, furnished as usual, persevered in vain to make way against the drenching storm and the strong wind that blew. Every step buried them over their shoe-tops. Returning to camp, wet and miserable, with soaked beards swabbing their breasts, not a few seemed by their bemired appearance, as if some catastrophe had rolled them in a marsh. Throughout the day of the 11th the rain continued to pour; the mud had much increased, and sheets of water stood in the batteries and parallels at places where hollows or uneven ground favoured such accumulations. The soles of the embrasures were ankle deep, and seams were made in the merlons and roofs of the magazines by the wearing flow of the rain. The sappers and working parties again held their places in the batteries, for nothing excused them as long as there was a chance of making progress, however trivial. Much was attempted, but little succeeded beyond replacing some overturned gabions and patching up rifts in some of the more important constructions. Sergeant Kester Knight, and a small force of carpenters on the right attack, toiled with exemplary zeal at one of the magazines of No. 14 battery; but their progress was at length interrupted by a considerable portion of the timber prepared for the work having been abstracted. Some of the beef barrels, likewise, wanted for revetments in other parts of the trenches, were unhooped, and the staves captured for camp uses by the working party. Strange that men should sacrifice to personal objects the very means provided to give efficiency and success to the operations for defending them!

On the night of the 11th no working party was provided the weather being fearfully stormy. There were, however, 24 sappers, heavily clothed in long boots, overcoats, and waterproofs, dispersed in the right trenches under Lieutenant Graves of the engineers, who worked through the darkness unsheltered from the rain. One brigade was extended in the new communication on the right, in front of No. 8 mortar battery, blasting the rock and building the loosened boulders into the parapet; another brigade was in No. 14 battery, attending to the magazines and embrasures and clearing the choked-up channels for the passage of the water into the ravine. Eight carpenters were engaged for awhile in laying platforms in No. 12 battery, but the rain fell with such heaviness, that the spaces prepared to receive the sleepers were soon inundated. In this extremity the men made furrows in the sloughy ground, and thus drained the sites to permit them, when the storm should abate, to resume their tasks.

Nothing, it would seem, was enough to induce the Russians to seek repose; rather, indeed, the presence of storms, the more angry the better, whetted their spirit for activity and assault. Two hours before midnight they opened a sharp fire of musketry, accompanied by a cannonading of shells upon our works, which was stoutly met by incessant volleys from the guard of the trenches and five guns in the 21-gun battery. On the left attack, where Captain Hassard was on duty, there were only four sappers to carry out his orders. But little could be expected from such initial means in such a supremely dismal night. In about two hours, however, under a constant torrent, they altered the flank embrasure of No. 8 battery, to enable its gun to play into the extreme Russian rifle-pit on the right. Just as they had finished, corporal Thomas Kirkwood, who had subordinate charge of the party, heard the bustle of an approaching sortie. Communicating the intelligence to his officer, Captain Hassard flew through the zig-zags and parallels and had the guard of the trenches in readiness to meet it. This was barely accomplished when the enemy tore up the hill from the rifle-screens in the Woronzoff ravine. Now they were near the parapet, and about to enter at its most accessible points; but so close and prompt was the resistance they received from the works that a hasty retreat was the consequence. Light balls, thrown from a Cohorn mortar in No. 7 battery, discovered a second column pressing to the centre of the advanced parallel. A few, more daring than the rest, even jumped into the trenches; but the vigour of the besiegers pushed back the assault with severe loss to the enemy. No. 1 battery opened on the quarries, No. 2 on the Redan, and some effective rounds were fired from the flank gun of No. 8 battery by Captain Collingwood Dickson of the artillery. The loss sustained by the British was 1 officer and 5 men killed; 1 officer and about 30 men wounded. The four sappers being unarmed, were withdrawn to preserve them from danger.

Where sand-bag revetments had been used, the havoc committed by the tempest was general. Want of slope was the cause. Being early constructions, they had not shared in the improvements which experience had subsequently introduced. Some of the works, loosened by degrees, fell down and encumbered the trench. The surgeon’s hut was a ruin. Sixty-four sappers were appointed to the trenches on the 12th May, to make good the damages. In a day or two the medical quarter in No. 2 battery on the left was rebuilt by 17 sappers; the huts for the generals were repaired and strengthened; the embrasures and magazines mended, and all the revetments strongly bolstered up and properly battered. The draining, moreover, was enlarged and considerable advancement made in all the details of the new batteries. Blasting rock on the left was a special feature in the day’s labour. Twelve sappers were employed in the duty in No. 11 battery, and in front of the inner ammunition cave, from which they also constructed a ladder to the shaft leading to the trench above.

Showers were frequent during the day and heavier in the following night. No working party was provided, but 20 sappers under Lieutenant Drake, who seemed to be invulnerable against inclemency, were far away in advance draining the approach to the right rifle-pit in the Gordon attack. Against the darkness and rain they endured with commendable resolution, and though restricted by the storm in their exertions, nevertheless afforded an instalment of relief to the screen. A few of the most energetic and skilful also rebuilt, in the 21-gun battery, an embrasure which had been washed down by the rain.

So went on the works to the 15th, when private Reuben Wiles, one of a few miners employed in cutting rock at the caves on the left attack, in connection with the left boyau, was wounded. During the preceding night, the heavy firing from the Creek batteries had upset several of the gabions and made a wide breach in the parapet. It was when passing this gap, bearing gunpowder and fuses for blasting purposes, that a round shot, striking the broken angle of the trench, tore away a sand-bag, and threw it full at the chest of the miner. Wiles, who was knocked down by the blow, was also covered with a shower of stones; which, besides bruising him in different places, made a gash across his nose, contused one of his eyes, and wounded him in the right knee. A similar accident, the following night, wounded private Edward R. Hodgkinson severely in the head.