At night on the 27th, sergeant Docherty accompanied Lieutenant Penn, R.A., to a point in the ravine near the cemetery where some rifle pits were to be established. After acquainting himself with the locality, he was directed by the officer to return to the trenches and visit the workmen. The night was very dark, and danger was apprehended from some Russian screens near the garden wall. Docherty picked his way as best he could, without a track to guide him, over broken ground and by detached blocks of rock and precipitous cliffs, till he clambered up a beetling brow to the crest of the valley, where, lying down, he applied his ear to discover if any one was astir in his vicinity. There were footsteps not far from him—the measured pace of a sentinel, towards whom he cautiously moved; but as he went nearer, he saw, through the darkness, the shadowy outline of two men whom he suspected belonged to a Russian picket. Wishing, as he was still unobserved, to be assured of his position before proceeding further, he used the faint whistle which the English sentries knew how to acknowledge, and his signal was returned by a purling sound equally faint. No longer in doubt of his safety he advanced to the two men, one of whom was a sergeant; but as Docherty, approaching them from the front, was looked upon as a spy, he was marched to the field officer of the trenches. Speaking English, and making known his corps and rank, were only so many proofs to the sergeant that his prisoner was a clever Russian. The field officer examined him, and receiving accurate replies to his interrogatories on subjects which a sapper only could have become acquainted with, dismissed him—to the surprise of the sergeant, who was thus deprived of the chance of recording, among the incidents of his trench life, the capture of a Russian spy.
Fears were expressed on the 29th March that the enemy was mining under one of the cave magazines on the right attack. A sapper acquainted with the methods of detecting subterranean noises volunteered to enter the cave to ascertain if any work was being carried on beneath it. In this hole, with enough gunpowder in it to excite alarm, he coolly immured himself for more than two hours; but hearing nothing to convince him of the existence of a countermine, quitted his concealment and allayed by his report the apprehension.
On the 31st March, private William Relf was severely wounded in the knee, and second-corporal Richard Bridgman was hit slightly in the face and shoulder. Both were struck by splinters from the same shell. For months this non-commissioned officer was daily and nightly in the trenches serving out the tools on the right attack, and on three or four occasions the helves of axes and shovels have been shattered in his hand while passing them to the workmen.
During the night of the 2nd April, a zig-zag was opened from the right rifle pit in front of the advanced parallel right attack by flying sap. One hundred and twenty yards were trenched, and the cover thrown up was very tolerable. The moon being bright, the “flying” nature of the operation was reduced to one of tardy but impulsive efforts. As the light, however, gave but a dim outline of the sap to the enemy, the Russian fire from two field-pieces was delivered indifferently; but when the morning began to break, greater accuracy was obtained, and a few men were struck down. Among them were privates Robert Russell killed, and Thomas McNeil[McNeil] severely wounded. The former had his head smashed by a round shot, and, singularly enough, a fragment of his quivering jaw flew off and wedged into the jaw of his comrade—McNeil—and broke it.
Early in the morning of the 4th April, Lieutenant Bainbrigge of the engineers was killed. He had given directions to corporal William Baker of the seventh company, relative to strengthening the parapet of a battery to the left of No. 9, in the second parallel right attack, when a shell was observed coming towards them from the Redan. Roth were on the open without the remotest chance of taking cover. To avoid the danger the corporal started to the right, the young subaltern to the left, as if to allow the missile to pass between them. At that instant it plunged at the feet of the officer, and bursting, blew his body to atoms. The corporal was untouched. There were, at the time, fifteen of a working party in a shallow trench, throwing earth from the front to the merlon of the battery, but not a man was struck.
Next night corporal J. J. Stanton, with four sappers, was entrusted with the extension of the third parallel, right attack. He was a daring man was the corporal, and flying on with the work, he laid himself no less than 170 gabions. His four overseers filled them with bags of sand, handed forward by a working party of 200 men, who also broke the ground and improved the cover, despite an annoying fire from the rifle-pits about fifty yards in front. The soil fortunately was easy, and the men worked so well that, when the morning relief arrived, the parapet had risen to a height sufficient for a working party to improve the trench by day. The corporal was named in brigade orders for his spirited example and successful superintendence.
Increased exertions were turning to deadly account all the means necessary for giving magnitude and certainty to the operations. Everywhere the works were rising in different forms, menacing in aspect, which, only for the wide area of stony clay and rock which covered the hills, would, by this time, have almost intermingled with the advanced positions of the Russians. Impenetrable by pickaxe, mining was the common process of dislodging the stones. At particularly hard or exposed works it was impossible to employ any but sappers. The 21-gun battery, insatiable in its wants, commanded the zeal of strong parties. Rifle screens were begun, deepened, or improved far away in advance to pioneer the enterprise. That system of hostile espionage had been so successful, it was enlarged to lessen the fire of the enemy’s tirailleurs. An advanced excavation had been formed across the Woronzoff road in the middle ravine; but this not affording sufficient security against a surreptitious sortie, was further defended by a stout chevaux-de-frise fixed some distance in its front. Splinter-proof surgeries were also constructed, intimating an impending struggle. Limestone caverns in the sides of the hills were converted into receptacles for ammunition, shells, &c., and their rude entrances were protected by walls of sand-bags and dry stones. Other magazines were also made by driving galleries under the super-incumbent rock into a bed of clay resting on a vein of shells. Scooping out the earth between, artificial caves were thus formed with rocky roofs and testaceous floors. To provide against the chances of the arches falling in, by the concussion of heavy mortars in the batteries, strong props were fixed in those grottoes, and the powder deposited within them was preserved by the usual contrivances. All the revetments were put into fighting trim, and embrasures cut or masked as events dictated. The merlons, too, were thickened, so also were the traverses and parapets, more particularly in the parts where the works standing on the crests of the hills in advance were the most exposed. On the right attack, the sappers were driving on vigorously in advance of the second parallel. The first night’s work for this object was given on the 3rd April. In a short time the zig-zag was run out to the intended point, and turning off like a shepherd’s crook, it seemed as if it were ambitious to hook on to the Redan.
Three days later, seventy men were employed on the left attack, forming, on the right extremity of the third parallel, a work for two 9-pounders. Four hours they had laboured at it, when daylight having exposed them, the field officer refused to permit the continuance of their services. As, however, it was important to push the work, Major Chapman, of the 20th regiment, the assistant engineer on duty, ordered ten sappers under lance-corporal Robert Hanson, to repair to the trench. It was a clear morning and the work exciting. Gabions and fascines had been laid by a previous party, so that the sappers were covered from musketry, though not from heavier missiles. As they were strengthening the parapet, the earth thrown up being seen by the enemy, a fire of every description of projectile, even links of chain, was hurled against it. In some measure to prevent accident, a “look-out man,” in turn, took his station at the head of the trench to peep round the hot corner. Sweeping with a quick eye the cordon of ordnance in front, the caution to “look out” came thick and fast. In time it was so rapidly reiterated, occasioning interruptions which did not coincide with the men’s notions of progress, that, preferring to toil without this species of questionable assistance, the “look out man” was withdrawn, and made to unite his strength with the shovellers. With faultless energy and confidence, they persevered in the work though harassed by an incessant fire, with grape in clusters, blown from mortars, dropping into the trench. Presently a shot crashed against the revetment, capsized three gabions and two fascines, wounded lance-corporal James Veal in the neck, and knocking down corporal Hanson, buried him beneath the rubbish. There was great reason to fear that the smash was fatal, and Major Chapman, who happened to be in the work at the moment, called out in the forlorn hope of receiving a reply, “Are you hurt, corporal?” Unexpectedly there was a movement in the mass; the gabions rolled lazily aside as the corporal struggled from the debris; and in springing to his feet he cheerfully exclaimed, “All right, sir!” The perils of the battery were of a nature to induce Major Chapman instantly to withdraw the sappers. Two nights after, the work was finished and its embrasures were opened.
On the day of the 7th, lance-corporals Rinhy and Jenkins were building a magazine in No. 8 battery of the left attack. The timbers were just rising when, seeing a 13-inch shell approaching from the Flagstaff, the latter dashed between the uprights and screened himself behind a traverse. Rinhy, less fortunate, had to endure all the horrors of anticipated annihilation, for the shell, plunging towards him, passed with the swiftness of a meteor an inch or two from his back, and in bursting carried away the frame, without touching the carpenter.
During the next night the mouths of No. 7 battery, on the left attack, were cut by a strong party of sappers, but the deep mud in the excavations did not admit of the guns being moved into position, so that in the interim the openings were blinded with sand-bag screens.