In the afternoon, the strongest and most secure magazine on the right attack was blown up. It was on the left of the 8-gun battery. A shell plunged through the roof and bursting, all that remained of the magazine was a smoking ruin. Private John Heaton who was returning to his party after mending a platform at a distance, was killed by the explosion and not an atom of his remains was ever discovered. Privates George Wright and Stephen Gossage were wounded by fragments of the scattered timber. On hearing the report—ominous of loss both of material and life—the Russians jumped on their batteries and parapets, and, intimating their joy at the calamity by a fiendish yell, quickly disappeared behind their revetments.
Wherever the Russians had established screens, they opened communications to them, and then connecting each with the other, so formed a parallel. One of this kind stretched its length 150 yards in front of the British trenches which was nightly strengthened, widened, and improved. The line, extending from the Mamelon to the Quarries, formed the enemy’s exterior defence, beyond which except the rifle-pits he was never able to advance. As the besiegers flung out their boyeaux and breasted them with batteries or filled them with sharp-shooters, the Russians, equally pushing, spent their arts and energies in rendering their works both formidable and inaccessible. This advanced parallel having greatly annoyed the besiegers and laid many a brave section low, a combined attack was determined on,—the French to assault the Ouvrage Blancs and the Mamelon; the English, the Quarries and its appended works facing the left of the right attack.
At about six in the evening—just as the sun was setting—the assault was made by half a battalion of infantry from the light and second divisions headed by Lieutenant Lowry of the engineers and a small party of royal sappers and miners. The whole were commanded by Colonel Shirley. Divided into two columns of 200 each, the half battalion dashed on to the flanks of the Quarries, and supported by a reserve of 600 men, fought nobly against odds which threatened to overwhelm them. A tremendous cannonade had swept the Quarries until a few minutes before the encounter, when all the batteries turned their venom on the Russian lines and broke them up one after another. Repelled once, the assailants soon recovered themselves and drove the Russians before them; but, contending against an enemy almost invincible, the stormers again and again were forced back. At this moment, Lieutenant-Colonel Tylden of the engineers, who had a working party of 800 men under his orders, let loose his armed pioneers, and three-fourths of them rushed into the quarries—those impregnable hollows, hemmed in by walls of rock and paved with broken stones and boulders—to share in the contest. This timely help, giving fresh vigour to the assault, the stormers, renewed in spirit, bravely seconded the stern efforts of the reinforcements; and a withering musketry, close and telling, struck down their antagonists to the earth, leaving chasms in their masses which a stream of troops from the Redan as quickly refilled. Swoop following swoop levelled section after section, succeeded by a temporary wavering which augured a retreat. The quivering, however, passed, and the enemy yet stood in the pits which so long had shielded them and worried the assailants as if the last man intended to die in the ambuscade. Already the immolation showed how desperate was the strife; the Russians at length, were well nigh exhausted; but a few minutes more, and the besiegers, struggling over the debris of old explosions and amid rocky traverses and huge fragments of stone, pressed the enemy’s columns at all points and drove them bewildered into the Redan. The Ouvrage Blancs and the Mamelon by this time were gallantly taken by the French.
As soon as the seizure had been accomplished, Lieutenant-Colonel Tylden moved up from the right-ravine communication his working party of 200 eager men led by a few sappers with corporal Joseph J. Stanton. There was no confusion; no complexity of detail; and at once, under Lieutenant Elphinstone of the engineers, the lodgment was commenced, while the zigzag from the quarries, to connect with the left advanced sap adjoining Egerton’s rifle-pits, was opened under Captain Wolseley of the 90th regiment, assistant engineer. Every nerve was strained to perfect the works before morning; the trenches were quickly reversed; and the earth and stones belonging to the old revetment were built into the new parapet which was faced with gabions, 200 of which, all that were brought in by the working party, were laid by Lieutenant Elphinstone, corporal Stanton, and the sappers. Bold efforts were ineffectually made by the Russians to regain their loss, even carrying away, in their desperate prowess, some of the lumbering gabions; but the victors, indisposed to yield an inch, retook the baskets and held the ambuscade with intrepid tenacity, while the working party, saved by the vigilance of the stormers from material interruption in their exertions succeeded, before the arrival of the new relief, in giving to the lodgment[lodgment] and communication sufficient cover for immediate defence. All this being effected in a dark night, with thick dangers around, was creditable to the endurance and industry of the officers who directed and the soldiers who toiled. Captain Browne of the engineers had the general superintendence of the works under Colonel Tylden.
Lieutenant Lowry, a young officer, led the storming party most gallantly and was killed while rallying the men after having been repulsed. He was carried away by some sappers, who, working on the parapet of the quarries saw him fall. His sword was delivered to corporal Stanton, of which he made good use. A Russian was outside, behind a gabion, bent on his knee. Observed while in the act of levelling his musket, Stanton waved the sword, and with one blow struck him down. Lieutenant Elphinstone and corporal Stanton were working side by side at the time, but the former was unaware of his danger till the deadly act of the latter had removed the cause.
Lieutenant Anderson of the 96th regiment, assistant engineer, was wounded early in the night. The sappers present in the storming were about 12, divided between the two assaulting columns; 40 were with the reserve battalion and the working party, and other brigades were distributed to the batteries. The casualties among the parties were eight wounded:—
Second-corporal Peter Luxton—severely, in the head, by grape-shot.
Private William McDonald—dangerously, by fracture of skull, from gun-shot. He died of his wounds.
” William R. Collings—dangerously, in left leg, by rifle-ball. He had crept up the open and was in the act of stretching the tape by which to place the line of gabions to connect the zigzag from the quarries to the left advanced approach, when the ball entered below the swell of his leg and issued at the knee. He died of his wounds.
Lance-corporal Robert Young—severely, in the right arm, in Greenhill battery.