Every day parties of skirmishers went out from the Allied lines, and lay under cover among the loose large stones about one thousand yards in advance of the batteries, and within two hundred yards of the Russian defences.
This compelled the enemy to send out parties to dislodge them, and these, as they advanced for that purpose across the open ground, became exposed to the fire both of the skirmishers and of the trenches, and usually suffered severely.
On one occasion a private in the British lines who had fired his last cartridge, was crouching along the ground to join the nearest covering-party, when two Russians suddenly sprang from behind a rock, and seizing him by the collar, dragged him off towards Sebastopol.
The Russian who escorted him on the left side held in his right hand his own firelock, and in his left the captured Minié; with a sudden spring the British soldier seized the Russian’s firelock, shot its owner, clubbed his companion, and then, picking up his own Minié, made off in safety to his own lines. Another of these fellows resolved to do more work on his own account, got away from his company, and crawled up close to a battery under shelter of a bridge. There he lay on his back, and loaded, turning over to fire; until, after killing eleven men, a party of Russians rushed out and he took to his heels; but a volley fired after him levelled him with the earth, and his body was subsequently picked up by his comrades riddled with balls.
Probably 100,000 shot and shell a-day, exclusive of night-firing, was the average amount of projectiles discharged by both parties in the extraordinary siege.
The darkness of night was constantly interrupted by the bursting of shell or rockets.
The passage of the shells through the air, thrown to an amazing height from the mortars, appeared like that of meteors. To the eye, the shell seems to rise and fall almost perpendicularly; sometimes burning, as it turns on its axis, and the fuse disappears in the rotation, with an interrupted pale light; sometimes with a steady light, not unlike the calm luminosity of a planet. As it travels it can be heard, amid the general stillness, uttering in the distance its peculiar sound, like the cry of the curlew. The blue light in a battery announces the starting of a rocket, which pursues its more horizontal course, followed by a fiery train, and rushes through the air with a loud whizzing noise that gives an idea of irresistible energy. So went on, day and night, ceaselessly, this unparalleled bombardment—a cataract of war, a Niagara of all dread sounds, whose ceaseless booming was heard for long miles around. Ship after ship, nearing the Crimean shores, heard from afar that dull, heavy sound, and all eyes were strained to catch sight of the dread scene, of that valley where the battle of Europe was being fought, where the cannon were ever sounding, and “the fire was not quenched.”