Condition of the batteries; their repair—Alarm of a sortie—Noble intention of four comrades to recover the body of corporal Baker—Strategic occupation of the rifle redoubt behind the cemetery—Interchange of civilities between the Russian and English truces—Capture of a memento—Escape of Lieutenant Donnelly and lance-corporal Veal—Lodgment in the cemetery—A sortie frustrated—Destruction of the rifle redoubt—No. 18 battery, right attack—Perils in the saps in advance of the quarries—Progress of the works—Re-occupation of the cemetery—The stone double sap; corporal J. T. Collins—The two Dromios—Industry of the miners—Progress of the works and repairs—Even during a storm—Advance of the chevaux-de-frise up the Woronzoff ravine—Sappers annoyed by light balls—Difficulties in executing the works—Demolitions in the rear parallels—The Picket-house—Approach to the cemetery—Wooden bridge—General officers’ hut—Abstraction of gabions by the French—Gallantry in pushing the sap from left advanced parallel, right attack—Night details—No. 15 battery, left attack—Obstacles to success in commencing the fifth parallel, right attack—Trenches in the cemetery—Progress of the works—Conduct and exertions of the engineers and sappers.

By the enemy’s fire, a number of embrasures had been seriously damaged or demolished, and their early fall was ascribed to the unsubstantial manner in which they had been built under the superintendence of some young and inexperienced sappers fresh from England. The works which bore the brunt of the fight were the 21-gun battery and Nos. 13, 14, and 17 on the right attack. The first had ten embrasures in ruins, while the remaining batteries scarcely retained a vestige of resemblance to their original construction. At night there were 20 sappers on the right, and 22 on the left, assisted respectively by working parties of 100 and 273 men. Many of the damaged embrasures were rebuilt before morning; a passage was widened round the traverse in Egerton’s pit for the passage of guns, and a number of gabions which had been thrown down or fractured during the bombardment were replaced in the zig-zags leading to the quarries, and in the saps issuing from them. The platforms which had been stoutly laid resisted with firmness the violence to which they had been subjected, and the magazines withstood an exasperated cannonade with remarkable success. Several scaling ladders which had fallen with their intrepid bearers in the unavailing assault, and many of the abandoned woolsacks were removed; and it was due to the endeavours of a few spirited volunteers, that about twenty-five men, found on the field disabled by frightful wounds, were carried to the trenches.

At midnight there was an alarm of a sortie among the French in front of the Mamelon, which rapidly spread to the quarries. A brisk play of projectiles took place on both sides, in which the men in the rear trenches heartily joined. Without a real object to deserve such warmth—for the Russians had not left their works—they necessarily fired at random, and some of the workmen in the foremost trenches were wounded from our own missiles.

A wounded sergeant of the 3rd division had crept into the lines next day, and reported that a corporal of sappers was still alive in the garden. Four of his comrades—corporals William Donald, John Medway, Samuel Varren, and Robert J. Fitzgerald, all of the third company—with a nobleness of feeling that did them infinite credit, agreed, though not on duty, to go out and bring him to camp. Accordingly they pushed into the trench in front of the caves, and seeing, by the aid of an opera lorgnette, that Baker was motionless, they were desired by Lieut. Donnelly to defer the attempt, as a truce would shortly take place, which would enable them to recover the corporal without peril or molestation.

Major-General Eyre wanting support, was compelled to leave the cemetery he had gallantly taken on the 18th. Conceiving that circumstances favoured a bloodless appropriation of the rifle-pits near the cemetery, Lieutenant Donnelly secured the services of these four men to accompany him; and while he collected twenty volunteers from the 20th regiment, private Fitzgerald was sent away to get ten riflemen. Communicating his orders to the officer commanding the covering party of the rifle brigade, the number of men were soon made up; but before Fitzgerald arrived with the detachment, Lieutenant Donnelly had gone with his party from the left of No. 11 battery down the ravine to the garden, where, as the firing was hot, he and the volunteers were obliged to lie among the grass and fruit trees till a momentary lull gave them an opportunity of moving cautiously to some suburban houses, among which they dodged, and then crept on all-fours to the wall of the cemetery, where they concealed themselves. Meanwhile Fitzgerald leading the riflemen, started from one of the boyaux behind No. 7 battery, and dashing down the hill under a close fire—for all were exposed—they reached the garden wall nearest to our trenches. It was some five or six feet high, built of dry rubble stone, behind which, as they were blown by their fleetness, they halted to take breath. Relieved by a brief stay, Fitzgerald, the first to spring over the wall, was followed by the rifles, like bloodhounds in full chase; and redoubling their speed, raced onwards under an incessant rattle of musketry, stopping not till they had joined Lieutenant Donnelly at the cemetery wall.

Another move was now made to the head of the ravine, where Lieutenant Donnelly placed four men in the first pit, and pushed on to a more commanding pit on a green knoll; but, unable to occupy it, he distributed his volunteers, for safety, among some trees and old walls in the neighbourhood. While these dispositions were being enacted a truce was agreed upon, which turned the young officer loose on the little Mamelon, around which he placed his detachment as sentries. The Russians regarding the pits as in our possession, did not ascend the mound, but an officer, disinclined to yield the spot, passed the sentries; and after scrutinizing the locality with speculative curiosity, returned to his men. The four sappers then went in quest of Baker. When found, he was dead, and had been so for some hours. He was, therefore, borne away to camp.^[188]

At last the melancholy duty of giving a rough and unceremonious sepulture to the many dead was accomplished, and Lieutenant Donnelly descending the mound, moved to the nearest rifle-pit, as did also lance-corporal James Veal, who bore the white flag. Whilst standing near the pit, shrouded by the sacred truce, two rifle shots, and shortly after, a score or two of Miniés were aimed at them. This angry attack was no doubt occasioned by the report of the officer who forced the sentries. It was useless now to wave the banner to seek protection under colour of the truce, and as little hope for their lives was left them, they depended upon the tact they could exercise to effect their escape. Lieutenant Donnelly jumped over the parapet, and as he ran, a constant fire, which would have appalled many an older head, neither made him falter nor stay his course; and he reached the trenches, as if an egis had shielded him, without a stroke. Veal remained in the pit, assailed by an incessant shower of grape and Miniés, shot and shell, which made gaps in the screen that covered him. There he stood till the darkness fell; when stealing unperceived from the danger he had for so many hours outlived, he scrambled ahead as best he could, and picking his way through the suburbs and gardens, hastened up the hill-side to the 5-gun battery in the first parallel, with the same scathless fortune as his officer.

This strategic episode opened up new advantages which were instantly turned to account by the besiegers. Strong parties were sent into the cemetery grounds to extend the lodgment as far as the vineyard wall. A communication was likewise opened to it, in part, from the fourth parallel. Near the vineyard, however, the Russians burnt down some houses, which enabled them to see into the position and worry the workmen. In the night of the 19th, corporal Lockwood had with him a party deputed to a portion of the duty. From the left of No. 7 battery, which overhung the ravine in rear of the caves, he marched along the side of the hill, and, diving into the valley, entered the cemetery through a door-way in the stone boundary wall. His men threw up a parapet from the wall to some rifle-pits; another party under corporal William Donald, continued the trench from the pits, which afterwards became the left portion of the fifth parallel; and a third party under corporal George H. Collins, worked from the fourth parallel down the hill to meet the trench opened by corporal Donald. These three parties were superintended by sergeant Coppin. The firing on the cemetery and the new trenches was fierce and constant; grape and shells fell in incessant showers; and in corporal Lockwood’s party alone, no less than fourteen men were killed and wounded before day-break. In the face of so much hostile activity, with sheets of flames from the burning village lighting up the work, it was not an easy matter to labour, but yet the sappers and linesmen persevered for a time in placing and filling no less than eighty gabions. At last the working party, among whom so many casualties had occurred, decamped, leaving their tools behind them, which were carried away by the sappers, who returned twice to the deadly trenches to complete the removal of the stores and the muskets of the killed and wounded.

For a few nights the work continued under circumstances of great peril. Flights of bullets were levelled at the workmen from musketeers, who, having crept up among the smouldering houses in the vineyard, and sheltered themselves in unseen positions, calculated too truly—from their previous occupation of the place and their foresight—where the besiegers would be appointed to toil. In the night of the 21st it was hardly possible, except at a prodigal loss, to employ more than twenty men and three choice sappers in the lodgment. Covered by a party from the 4th foot under the command of Captain Dowbiggen, who had judiciously posted his guard to make the most of any sudden attack, the workmen repaired the breaches in the trench, and filled as many gabions as it was found practicable to stake. The linesmen and sappers were directed by Lieutenant C. G. Gordon of the engineers. A body of Russians advanced with a cheer towards the cemetery from the vineyard and threatened by their strength to annihilate the little party; but their fire having been returned with more warmth by the guard than was anticipated, the Russians, doubtlessly possessing a delusive notion that the cemetery was held by a powerful force, retired without personally contesting an occupation which would have ended to their credit. That the gallant bearing of the party had deceived the enemy is almost proved by the fury with which it was plied. During the whole night four mortars played on them from the garden batteries; and frequent shots and grape raked them from the Creek and Barrack batteries causing among the steadfast sentries and the industrious sappers and workmen about twenty-two casualties.

It behoved the engineers to proceed with caution in so fatal a spot, and if they could not readily adapt the cemetery to their own purpose, to make it inoperative to the enemy. At the time, the sacrifice of life in working it was more than the advantage of its retention; and it was, therefore, determined to destroy the position and evacuate it. Quietly and quickly were the entrances from the Russian works into the pits filled up, and other depredations committed to nullify communication with the cemetery and little Mamelon behind. In the night of the 22nd, in order to extend the demolition, five sappers under Lieutenant Neville of the engineers, crept into the rifle redoubt above the cemetery with destroying implements. It was a covered loop-holed ambuscade made up of old doors and window-shutters. No time was lost, for the duty was one of imminent risk. Mounting the work, the sappers threw down about thirty-five feet of the splinter proofing, and, hurling it into the ditch, concealed it from observation by a covering of earth. So hard and zealously did the sappers work under a heavy fire of grape and shells, that their names were recorded for the notice of Lord Raglan. Second-corporal George Henry Collins, and privates David Muir, William Goddard, John Ford, and William Eddy, were the men engaged in this intrepid demolition.

The operation was repeated the next night by four sappers under second-corporal Trimble, who worked for four hours filling up the old Russian trenches, while a rattling musketry, intermingled with crashing projectiles, scarcely checked the vigour of their exertions. Though not wholly destroyed, the ambuscade was abandoned, marked only by one trifling wound among the men and the breaking of a shovel helve in the hand of the industrious man who was using it. When the night of the 25th had well advanced, Captain Belson, unaware that the screen had been relinquished, told off a working party to augment the ruins; but finding it unoccupied by a guard, he distributed his men to the general trenches, and went on with corporal Stredwick and a few cool sappers to complete what human energy had not time as yet to accomplish. There was no cover, except what the few standing grave-stones offered, and even this was questionable from the many sharp-edged fragments which, chipped from the slabs at every stroke of shot or shell, fell among the party. A heavy fusillade from sharpshooters in the screens made the situation of the sappers very critical. They worked, nevertheless, with a manliness that gave a noble aspect to labour; parapets were thrown down, ditches filled in, and timbers dislocated; but at length, as a sortie was apprehended—of which there were unmistakeable indications, for the enemy was seen moving up in broken bodies to the little Mamelon—the sappers were withdrawn by Captain Belson from the enclosure without even a scar to tell of their endurance and danger. It was a lucky escape, for a few minutes after, the Russians were in the pit.

A new battery—No. 18—for six heavy guns was reared under many difficulties, to rake the middle ravine and throw its metal into the Redan and the Malakoff. It was built on the swell of a trench a little in advance of a group of zig-zags and lateral excavations issuing from the second parallel of the right attack. The work was commenced on the 23rd June, and does not appear to have been wholly completed till the 7th July. Strong parties worked in it at each relief, and when finished, its revetments, standing up in the most solid and approved forms, resisted with some tenacity the crashing cannonade brought to bear upon it.

In the advance trench on the right of the quarries, the sappers, for three or four nights, had to watch with more than usual solicitude in making way against the perils which threatened them. It was good work to place as few as twenty-six gabions in this exposed situation, for the moon shining brightly in the heavens discovered to the enemy the true character of the progress effected; and being within about 300 yards of the Russian batteries, it needed that the men entrusted with the operation should be as collected and brave, as resolute and dexterous. As the moon rose with its meek but tell-tale face, the four sappers were obliged to quit the head of the sap and retire where the cover was thick, to protect them from the projectiles, which frequently overturned the baskets; but when the luminary was dimmed by a passing cloud, which made the gabionade appear indistinct, the sappers rushed forward, reset the overturned gabions, and staked as many more as the duration of the obscurity permitted. In this way was completed a line of initial revetment extending to about 45 feet. No pickaxe could be used or blasting resorted to in the vicinity of the sap. The gabions were, therefore, filled by fits and starts with earth gathered at a distance, brought to the work by thirty linesmen.

On a subsequent night the sky was almost cloudless, and the moon gleamed with so much clearness, that the danger of working the sap was as great as if conducted at noon-day. There were four sappers in the advance and fifty of a working party. When only a gauzy cloud moved between them and the moon, the former, bounding as from a lair, leaped a-head with the gabions and employed the transient intervals in giving them a place. Their exertions were carried on in paroxysms, and a night’s vigilance and ardour only counted the lodgment of nine gabions! So fearful was the risk of achieving even this trivial progress, that none but sappers could be confidently allotted to it. The line was, nevertheless, beneficially tasked in strengthening the cover of less exposed works.

Activity was the order of the trenches. Proud instalments of progress in every direction showed how well the men toiled, and how expeditiously they converted the enemy’s formations into terrible constructions for the future siege. On the right, the quarries, far in advance, were turned into formidable defences. They were strong by nature but vastly improved by art. The high gabions and flour barrels which faced the enemy’s revetments, were made to serve similar purposes in the besiegers’ works. Those quarries became the park for the front, in which was erected the engineer hut—scarcely bullet-proof—from whence orders were dispersed with cool despatch by the officers charged with the execution of the several works. From thence issued the fourth parallel—partly a Russian entrenchment—which cut up the hill and extended as far as the middle ravine; while approaches shot out daringly in front from the left of the old ambuscade in hazardous contiguity to the Russian lines and pits. Against the incessant firing of clear-sighted sharpshooters it was difficult to stand and persevere; yet on went the sap, sneaking stealthily forward like a huge snake, till branching off on either hand, it stretched its length in another parallel in front of the Redan. Three boyaux, cut on the crest of the hill in advance of the quarries, led to the fifth parallel; which, pushed along by energetic men, joined an abandoned Russian trench that breasted the left flank of the Redan, and run along ridge and glen to the famed Mamelon. Old magazines evincing signs of decay were revived, new ones constructed, and traverses, platforms, and the unending appurtenances of a gigantic siege, were made, repaired, or reformed. Instances of instability in the batteries had occurred, which caused the embrasures, &c., to be rebuilt by experienced hands. The 21-gun battery had past its day as a depôt. It was no longer the heart of the system, communicating life by its supplies to the arteries of the hills. Stupendous as it was, it lost everything but vitality, and the importance it had once acquired was now possessed by the quarries.

The weather had settled with intolerable heat, and a blazing sun beaming in a sky of unbroken blue, bronzed the lean faces of the workmen, and, sweating their spare frames, affected the stamina of all. A thunderstorm interposing, cooled the air and moistened the rock. It was an auspicious visitation, for it lessened the oppression and parching to which the workmen were subjected. The rain fell in torrents, and gushing down the ravines in floods, tumbled over balls, fragments of shells, and clods like so many cascades. Young trenches were inundated and older ones in some places covered with water ankle deep. Fears were entertained for the stability of the works and the efficiency of the drains, but when the tempest had ceased, so little was the damage done to the batteries that the necessary repairs were executed in a few hours. The water channels, on the contrary, were much impaired and became one of the chief difficulties in conducting the siege. At this period the number of the corps available for trench duty was 351 only. The sick present were 110 and those at Scutari, &c., were 51. The force detached to different places to carry out the multifarious services for which sappers were constantly demanded was 160. The total strength in the Crimea and in Turkey, as these details show, was 672 of all ranks.

On the left attack the Mamelon Vert above the Cemetery having been taken by the French, the post in the graveyard which had been abandoned was reoccupied in the night of the 27th by a British picquet to protect the right of the allies. The works in it were speedily turned and traverses constructed to ward off the firing from the Flagstaff batteries; while the enemy, confined within the main line of his defences, scarcely dared pit a rifleman beyond the chain. A brigade of sappers followed by a working party descended the side of the ravine warily pushing on gabion after gabion, and then trenching along its bottom and driving through rocks and unsheltered ground, at length reached a wall through which a breach being quickly made, on went the trench in the direction of a lone house in the valley, and in time was extended by blasting to the cemetery.

By the 27th of June, the covered-way, termed by the sappers the “stone double sap,” to protect the two large caves or “ovens” where a strong day picquet was posted, was completed. Like a terrace it run along the slope of the picket-house ravine among steep and jutting rocks, for about 300 feet, and was hollowed, every inch of it, by mining. Its face was between three and four feet high of solid rock, and above was placed a revetment of gabions, powder-cases and bread-bags filled and backed by fragments of stone blown up in the blasts and macadamized. Sand-bags were also used, and earth brought from the rear was shovelled among the stones to make the mass compact. To protect the trench from enfilade, six traverses of rock were formed as the work proceeded; but a bold one, seven feet in altitude, facing the mouth of the first cave, pushed across the trench for 22 feet, and possessed a breadth adapted to the object it was intended to serve. A curved continuation of the trench, stretching up the hill for 100 feet, rounded the second cave, whose enlarged mouth opening on the Russian batteries required strong cover to shield the chamber from the enemy’s fire. A parapet was therefore risen like a butt, some 16 feet broad at the crown, which stood well against grape and shot and averted dangers it seemed incapable of meeting. The revetment started from a foundation of rock built up to the necessary height with sand-bags. Subsequently it was thickened with earth and stones six feet broad, and faced inwardly by a row of large beef barrels crammed with rock and clay and crested by sand-bags. The caves themselves were connected by a cutting effected by four hard-working sappers under lance-corporal Simon Williams. Two cut from one cave, two from the other, descending on either side into easy soil to avoid the rock. Where the latter occurred, it was removed by points and hammers. The passage, about 26 feet through, was five feet six inches high and three feet three inches wide, and was completed in ten hours. A free communication was thus open from one to the other without the necessity of passing into the trench. Avenues were opened from the covered-way to the rear, and forward by a long arm, which, joined to a succession of saps like so many prodigious limbs or joints, skirted the ridge overlooking the ravine, and then connected with the fourth parallel. The approach from the caves to the communication leading to the parallel was by a natural opening in the surface of the hill, widened into a man-hole by the jumper and mining. At its base there were five or six stairs hewn out of the rock, on which was super-added an oaken ladder slanting to the top of the shaft; the entrance to which was screened by a semicircular revetment of beef barrels loaded with stones. This covered-way was of great importance, extremely difficult of execution, and as hazardous as laborious in working it. When finished, it was so perfect a cover, that the picquet quartered in it sustained a daily fire with impunity. Corporal Joseph T. Collins under Major Bent, was its plodding and steadfast overseer. He had with him six picked sappers and three miners of the 68th regiment, who were specially allotted to the task. More than three months were spent in its accomplishment, during which, and the forming of the correlative communications, corporal Collins was daily in the trenches. In that time many a bullet whizzed near him, and many a shell burst, splintering the rock and tearing down the barrels and sand-bags in his front and rear, but he neither dropped his head nor slackened his hand. Ardent, cool, and efficient, his example and exertions were of undisguised advantage in the prosecution of the sap, and his resolution to be compassed by no obstacle had the effect of establishing among his comrades a spirit to persevere and succeed. Once only was he struck while driving the sap. A blast went off unexpectedly, setting a shower of stones in motion, one of which hit him above the eye, and another, of crushing size and weight, hurtled past his breast. At last he was overtaken by a serious wound. On the 2nd of July he was passing through No. 14 battery left attack, when a rifle bullet pierced his thigh and took him from the trenches. Three months, save one day, 18th June, when he was granted the luxury of a little extra repose, he was daily under a fire of varying fierceness, and for his intrepid conduct in the “stone double sap,” coupled with other conspicuous acts of skill and fearlessness, he received two steps of promotion, was granted a gratuity of five pounds, decorated with a “distinguished service” medal, and also with the star of the French Legion of Honour.^[189]

Hourly the assailants encroached on the area which separated them from the besieged, beset in their industry by strange and incessant difficulties. Almost within hail of the Russians, the miners day and night carried out their tedious labours. As many as forty sappers were frequently thus employed in the advanced parallels and boyaux. A number of the line, between 80 and 100—practical quarrymen—afterwards joined them, who, directed by experienced corporals of the corps, worked with unwearied exertion. In sets of threes they carried out the operations, one turning the jumper while the others struck it blow for blow as in a smithy with hammers of about seven pounds’ weight. The constant clashing of these heavy tools, which could even be heard at the camp, made the lines as alive with din and rattle as an arsenal, and brought on the miners a fire at time so furious, that to see them, amid casualty and death holding to their employments, was a scene not to be surpassed by any spectacle of endurance in the trenches. Excavations cut by the pickaxe or blown into trenches by blasting, completed, so far, a series of communications which, like so many ligatures, tied together the several works in front and rear. Elaborate with entrenchments and batteries, the ground with its mammoth parallels, subordinate approaches and passages, places d’armes, rifle pits and screens, appeared like a vast labyrinth puzzling to the last degree; but to provide against chances of miscarriage, the engineers and sappers, forming a corps of guides, so led the workmen by night and by day, that few parties failed to reach the sites where they were appointed to toil. Yet with all this duty and peril, only two sappers were wounded between the 19th and 30th June. These were sergeant Philip Morant severely in the right cheek, the ball passing through his nose and escaping from the other cheek; and corporal James Douglas slightly in the head. The former who was the sergeant of the trenches on the right attack was working in the quarries when struck; the latter had just told off a brigade of sappers and 200 of the line to the works.

July found the siege a fixed employment, increasing in magnitude and approaching nearer to the Russian batteries. On the 1st, there were 24 sappers on the right and 57 on the left blasting in the fourth parallel, as also in No. 15 battery and the reserve ammunition magazine. With these they carried out various services in connection with batteries 13, 14, and 15, situated on the third parallel, which, from their prominence, shared largely in the hostile attention of the Russians. Their parapets which had been riven and loosened by the cannonade and washed down by the rain, were raised and strengthened; and their cheeks insufficiently sloped when originally built, were taken down and reconstructed; terrepleins were also formed in them and new magazines reared, with passages cut round the sites; while a strong body of miners improved the old road communication from No. 5 battery in the first parallel to No. 9—the left end battery—of the second parallel. On the right, Nos. 14 and 18 batteries had large parties appointed to them. The latter, a new formation, had no less than 160 men shovelling earth on the parapet, and eight sappers fixed the frames and splinter-proofs to its magazines. No. 14, occupying nearly a central position in the second parallel, had two of its embrasures cut and formed by the sappers. Others were widening approaches and communications, draining the second parallel, making a rifle pit in front of it, constructing sea-service mortar platforms on left of the 21-gun battery, repairing the parapet in the left communication to No. 18 battery, and removing revetting stores from No. 6 battery in the first parallel to the new works in front. The working parties consisted of 600 men; and though shelled with some briskness during portions of the day, all left the trenches unharmed.

Next day at dawn, 56 sappers, chiefly miners and carpenters, were sent into the foremost trenches on the left to blast the rock and lay platforms in the new batteries. They were unassisted by the line workmen, for a drenching rain confined them to camp. As from waterspouts the torrent fell, choking up the channels, inundating the works, and beating down some of the more fragile batteries. In such weather it was out of the question to continue the mining; but every man though wet and smoking with heat, exerted himself in clearing the standing water from the different formations. On the right attack there were 310 men in the trenches during the storm with 28 sappers under Captain De Moleyns. The second relief, at 3 o’clock, gave 200 men with 20 sappers, while the numbers furnished for the left attack were 400 under Major Chapman, assistant engineer.

In the following night 800 men, guided by 24 sappers, were sent into the right attack, and 150 of the infantry and 25 sappers into the left. The chevaux-de-frise in the Woronzoff ravine, which did good service in checking the advance of the enemy’s riflemen, was now moved from its original position to one in line with the memorable quarries, so that the rear works were not likely to be attacked by Russian columns stealing up the valley. A banquette was also made behind the iron barricade for a row of sharpshooters to pick off the artillerymen serving the Russian guns. The firing on various parts of the works was heavy through the night, and bouquets of shells were discharged with no better effect than slightly wounding three or four men, one of whom was private Thomas Luscombe.

On the 4th at night, four sappers and fifty men in the right portion of the trench in front of the quarries, pushed the sap to the right and widened and deepened the passage that led to it. Two light balls sent among them fell so near, one in front the other in rear, that, enclosed for nearly a quarter of an hour within a blaze, they were compelled to bend under the low parapet to save themselves from the effects of a furious shelling. Relays of grape succeeded, intermingled with Miniés, all striking the work but none injuring the workmen. Stout as was the opposition no less than twelve gabions were fixed by the sappers, and more would have followed, but the moon, appearing with a steady light uneffaced by driving clouds, caused the party to be withdrawn from the trench.

As cover could not be procured with sufficient expedition in the saps, earth was brought in baskets from a distance to make screens for the miners whilst blasting the rock. Excessive was the labour necessary to form the foremost trenches, and the perils attending the exertions of the miners, who made head against extraordinary difficulties, were only mitigated by wiles which experience and vigilance had taught them to employ. It was a subject of astonishment how the rock—that giant obstacle which appeared in every trench—could, in the face of a keen enemy, be thrown up and worked into solid mounds of parapet. A passage was cut that night in a novel manner with as much design and self-possession as on an English railway. One party descended the hill, the other forced up from the valley; and though the labourers encountered no end of trials from the obtrusion of rock, they effected a junction, building as they proceeded, a parapet two feet six inches in height. The miners were brawny fellows—each, in truth, a Hercules. Nothing overmatched their strength and industry; every foot driven in advance was full of interest; and in a few nights more, an uninterrupted communication of 250 yards with sufficient cover was completed from the left of the round hill parallel into the sombre graveyard. This parallel was a wonderful work. Its most advanced point was a place of arms. From its form and strength it was called by the sappers “the double elbow.” Jealous of the gradual development of our colossal system of saps and batteries, the enemy poured streams of grape and canister into the advances, causing many casualties. Hand balls in groups of forty or fifty thrown from mortars, were added to the roll of deadly agencies employed to pick off the miners.

No longer of use, the old engineer hut in the first parallel was pulled down and the barrels which made it splinter proof, were turned to account in improving the revetments of Nos. 14 and 16 batteries on the left attack. The picket-house battery, No. 6 armed with three heavy guns and three 10-inch mortars, posted on the French side of the ravine, was also demolished, and its serviceable materials used in the advanced works. The battery took its name from a deserted residence that stood in the glen a little below it, and which, from the commencement of the siege was occupied by a picket. The picket-house, known as such, par excellence, was situated on the crest of the Woronzoff ravine to the rear of the 21-gun battery. It was first the look-out place of the generals, and lastly the rendezvous of officers and amateurs of all countries; but even that interesting quarter yielded to the devastating necessities of the siege and was razed to the ground by some sappers. Its rafters, planks, and doors, torn by many a shell, were converted into platforms and splintering for magazines and huts. By degrees the walls were removed, chiefly for building hospitals; and fragments of wood, turned into articles of taste, were retained by the curious as memorials of the picket-house. Nothing was left of that celebrated structure, associated with so many exciting reminiscences, but the crumbled vestiges of its humble stateliness designated by the French “La ruine des Anglais.”

Corporal Lockwood on the 7th had charge of fifty men and three sappers forming a parapet with stones in the communication leading from the fourth parallel to the graveyard. The sappers attended to the building of the wall and the line handed to them the blocks and fragments. In time not a stone could be found not even as large as a walnut; and in order to keep the builders at work, the corporal spread a few of his party over the hill side in front to collect materiél. In this situation they were uncovered. Just then a fire-ball dropped among them, and on came discharges of grape and shells which struck down the corporal wounding him severely in the right thigh by the splinter of a shell.

About this time the sapper carpenters built a wooden bridge across the communication from the fourth boyau to No. 14 battery on the left attack. The battery rose out of the centre of the third parallel, and the approach stretched obliquely across the hill. This and one or two other similar constructions were the only instances during the siege of bridges being thrown under fire. The ramps formed out of the solid rock were blasted and shaped by six miners. Indeed the entire communication, about sixty feet, was driven through rock with no little skill.

On the right the sapper carpenters erected a splinter-proof hut for the general of the trenches in the new zigzag from the left of the second parallel. The struts and timbers were strong and braced, to resist, as far as contrivance could ensure safety, the shocks of heavy projectiles. Its roof was formed of fascines resting on rafters, thickened by three layers of sand-bags with earth riddled in among them to fill up the vacuities. The hut was nine feet six inches long by six feet broad and about seven in height, with a passage into it just ample enough for a good sized man to enter. There was no royal road to safety; no means of isolating this interesting quarter from the chances of danger. Sunken as it was, bringing its roof only a few feet above the level of the trench, and protected by traverses and parapets, splinters of shells and large shot were lying in its environs in dismal corroboration of the fact that the siege was no respecter of persons nor recognised any spot as entitled to the privilege of escape.

Seeing a collection of gabions idle, some French soldiers of the 20th and 27th regiments of the line, carried off about a hundred from the store and broke them up for firewood. Private Calderwood in charge of them, failing to make his bad French understood, remonstrated with the depredators by an extravagant display of gesture and grimace. The allies were humourous and treated the appeal of the irate sapper with more risibility than was agreeable. Lieutenant Darrah of the engineers appearing, he spoke of the abstraction to one of their officers, telling him the gabions were British property; and as if to add weight to his assertion, pointed out the unarmed soldier who had charge of them. Without attempting to excuse the appropriation, the French officer shrugging his shoulders, merely observed, that as the sapper had no carbine to show the nature of his authority, he could not be regarded as a sentinel; and so the gabions were borne away to cook French soup!

Next night 2 privates and 50 of the line were deputed to the right advance of the Gordon attack, who, in the face of light-balls and grape, staked no less than 79 gabions. Under the circumstances this was a feat in war. Nevertheless, from the briskness of the fire, there was an unwillingness to continue the sap, and the private in charge withdrew the party for a time to the left advanced trench, reporting the arrangement to Lieutenant Graham, who indisposed to spare the labour of a moment from the work, repaired himself to the spot. No sooner had he and the sapper arrived, than a shot bounded before them, and scattering the stones with great force, wounded Lieutenant Graham so severely that the trenches for a while were deprived of his services. The fire on the party in its new position, being still unrelaxed, the line-officer who commanded felt it his duty to take his men away, telling the sapper left in charge, that he regarded the place too perilous for line-men to work in. Inferentially, it was not too dangerous for sappers; but as a solitary individual could not hope to do much in so exposed a situation, he was removed by the assistant-engineer, Captain Wolseley, 90th regiment, to other work in the foremost trenches. Private Bernard Murray was this night wounded in the right hand, and next day privates James Mehan in the right ankle and Peter McNulty slightly by rifle bullets. The last had done good service in repairing an embrasure under fire at the request of a naval officer; and besides being in brigade orders for his conduct was given a donation by Lord Raglan.

On the night of the 10th, 18 sappers provided for the Gordon attack were told off to the following works under Captain Cooke of the engineers and Major Campbell, 46th, assistant-engineer:—

The above detail, taken with all its precision from the diary of the siege, may be regarded as the type of employment and distribution of the sappers at this era of the struggle.

About this time was finished No. 15 mortar battery in the third parallel. It was commenced on the 24th June, under the foremanship of second-corporal James Hill, who since the middle of May had been employed as one of Major Bent’s permanent day overseers. The way to it, from No. 14 battery, was driven through rock when occurred a good stiff clayey soil, upon which the new formation was founded. Wholly built of earth accessible at the spot, without a single sand-bag to assist its solidity, it was reckoned to be the boldest construction on the left attack. Stretching along the trench for 200 feet, with a parapet about 10 feet deep and 26 to 30 broad, it covered an armament of twelve 10-inch mortars, which were fed from three strong magazines and a shell-room. Free from the annoyance of cross-fires, there were no traverses in the work; and it was remarkable that during its progress only three shells pitched into it in day-time. One killed a line-man at the mouth of a magazine, another burst in the distance, and the third passed between Major Bent and the corporal. It was near enough to be alarming, but both were instantly prostrate, and on exploding the splinters flew high above them. When the battery opened fire, the earth shook down in various places, especially at the angles; to remedy which powder-barrels were added to the revetment. No work perhaps throughout the siege cost less labour in repairs and less casualties than No. 15 battery.

On the 14th July was commenced the fifth parallel of the Gordon attack on most intricate ground. The pioneers were horribly exposed to a cannonading from the Redan, Garden batteries, and Bastion du Mât. Hours of dogged labour failed to show an excavation which was worth the trouble of calculating its dimensions. Earth was collected with as much care as flour in a famine and brought on men’s shoulders from a distance to give quality to the cover. Every stone dislodged by the miners, treasured as if it possessed intrinsic value, was pitched into the gabion or added to the parapet behind. Upon the tier of gabions forming the revetment, sand-bags were laid in courses as fast as they could be delivered by the line. The trials of this foremost work were incalculable; the placement of every gabion was opposed, and every inch of progress furnished its obstacles. On one occasion several of the baskets were thrown down and not a few were broken and rendered useless. Difficult to labour under such circumstances, most of the working party were withdrawn; but all the breaches nevertheless were made good before the morning at a cost of two sappers and six of the line wounded.

Blanched bones buried for years in the Russian cemetery turned up in the excavations, took their places in the parapets with blocks of rock, broken tombstones, shattered coffins, and consecrated earth. It was not a time to care about memories, or removing marks fixed with hallowed care to point out the sites of favoured remains, but an innate feeling of reverence for the dead prevented the sappers and workmen, as much as in them lay, from disturbing the dread repositories of the dead or defacing the memorials, rude as many of them were, which filled the graveyard with melancholy records of the departed. This consideration for the relics of poor humanity did not produce among the workmen any false sentiment with regard to the living; and on every side powerful works and engineering stratagems were in operation to weaken the vigour and hauteur of a brave but insolent enemy.

Ceaseless perseverance drove on the works and sustained valour kept the men at their posts. One trench after another was added to the vast net-work of defences, which, crowding on the edges of the hills, descended the valleys as if pushed down by some capillary law. In this way the glens were crossed more than twice with saps. New approaches were thrown out in front like so many antennæ striving to clutch the enemy’s works. Still the progress was slow, for the oolitic rocks out of which the hills were formed obtruded everywhere, defying from their hardness all arts but those of blasting. Rifle-pits on the right were constructed on the very rim of the hill in front of the fourth parallel, to which they were connected and each to the other by long zigzags and passages. One built in a secluded nook or gorge commanded the chevaux-de-frise which stretched across the Woronzoff road. About this time the use of hay-band hurdles was resorted to with fair success as screens to the embrasures, to cover the artillerists at the guns. The pressure in front for materials caused some of the field-battlements in the rear to be dismantled, and the stores and armaments to be employed in the new works, while a few coopers augmented the stock by recovering the staves of broken casks and rehooping, them with iron.

So well, indeed, were the extensive and complicated requirements of the siege attended to, that Major-General Jones, a close observer of the exertions of his force, commended it in these encouraging words on the 16th July. “The officers of engineers and the men of the royal sappers and miners continue to perform their duties in a very zealous manner.” None flinched, none evaded his allotted labour; but many, from the “great heat of the trenches,” and the constant recurrence of a hard and fatiguing duty, were worn out or laid up and consumed by fevers. Truly wasting was the season, very light breezes only being astir to mitigate its oppressiveness. Strong hot winds at times, and heavy thunderstorms with frightful lightning playing above in angry forks or blazing sheets, told of its sultriness. Genial showers, however, now and again occurred to relieve it, which had the effect, in some degree, of refreshing the men, and giving an inspiriting spur to the flagging energies of overtasked industry.