At Cape St. Paul the intrenchments, extending more than a thousand yards inland, abutted on bold precipices overhanging the sea. Following the contour of a broken country, the knolls embraced in the lines became so many salients armed with one or more field-pieces. Strong works were thrown up in advance of the main trenches to flank them, and rifle-screens were constructed on eminences to command access to the wells, which, situated about 1200 yards in front of the works, were open to hostile interference. The hard nature of the soil in some places prevented the digging of ditches, and to counteract the defect, escarpments were erected about 12 feet high. A considerable portion of the redoubt at the extreme inland angle of the trenches was built with rough stones, faced by hewn blocks of a softer kind, accumulations of which were found already dressed and fit for use. Around St. George’s Hill huge boulders encumbered the trenches, which in time were borne up by manual strength and built into the parapets. Thunderstorms frequently occurring, the rains beat down portions of the earthen cover, which were renewed, though at great labour, with less yielding expedients. A mamelon, too, was wholly cut away to insure completeness in the defences, and the isolated battery on the promontory of Akbornou, standing up with a cold and truculent aspect, was levelled to the rock out of which it sprang. At that point was thrown up a bastioned trench by the 71st regiment to protect the right of the position. The sappers, eight in all, first under Captain Stanton, then Lieutenant Drake, superintended the construction of the several works, and returned to Sebastopol in the middle of December. Corporal McKimm and lance-corporal R. Crawford Cowan, two excellent sappers both of whom had been named with honour for their gallantry at the siege, were with the party.
At night on the 12th, Lieutenants Elphinstone and Graham traced the first portion of the fifth parallel facing the right flank of the Redan. They had with them second corporal George H. Collins and private Moncur, two smart and reliable sappers, to whom the executive superintendence of the work was intrusted. After completing the trace, 7 other sappers and 120 of the line commenced a boyau from the most advanced trench in front of the quarries. Fifty-six gabions were laid and filled in this approach, and then the sappers run along the new parallel with fifty other gabions, placing ten more at the extremity of the series, with a short obtuse angle backwards, to screen the linesmen while filling the baskets and forming the parapet of the new work. Alarms twice occurred which caused the workmen to retire. Collins, indisposed to yield to a questionable danger, went some distance to the front to ascertain if there existed any reason for it; but seeing nothing to justify the retreat, he encouraged the men to return and they readily resumed work. The relief had been in the trench some time when the second interruption took place. Again Collins restored confidence by mounting the parapet and there remaining till the ill-founded fears of the linesmen had subsided. Both parties, nevertheless, worked very well and obtained excellent cover. The sappers were on duty at this new sap for seventeen hours without relief.
The following detail shows the force of sappers furnished by night and day for front duty during the period comprised in the table. Ever-varying circumstances caused the number to fluctuate, so that with each party it was hardly possible to afford a stronger contingent of overseers than was marched at daybreak and at dusk into the trenches:—
| Attacks. | No. of Men. | Officers on Duty. | |||
| Night | 12th | June | Right | 48 | Lieuts. Elphinstone and Graham. |
| Left | 33 | Capt. Belson and Lieut. Donnelly. | |||
| Day | 13th | ” | Right | 40 | Capt. Browne and Lieut. Darrah. |
| Left | 63 | Major Chapman, 20th regt., assist. eng. | |||
| Night | 13th | ” | Right | 40 | Lieut. Fisher. |
| Left | 32 | Captain Jesse and Lieut. Neville. | |||
| Day | 14th | ” | Right | 44 | Lieuts. James and Somerville. |
| Left | 65 | Capt. Penn, R.A., assistant engineer. | |||
| Night | 14th | ” | Right | 40 | Capt. De Moleyns and Capt. Wolseley, 90th, assistant engineer. |
| Left | 36 | Capt. Armit and Lieut. C. G. Gordon. | |||
| Day | 15th | ” | Right | 40 | Lieuts. Graves and Graham. |
| Left | 49 | Lieut. Donnelly. | |||
| Night | 15th | ” | Right | 40 | Capt. Browne and Lieut. Darrah. |
| Left | 34 | Capt. Belson and Major Chapman, 20th. | |||
| Day | 16th | ” | Right | 40 | Lieut. Elphinstone and Major Campbell, 46th, assistant engineer. |
| Left | 42 | Lieut. Neville. | |||
| Night | 16th | ” | Right | 40 | Lieuts. Murray and Fisher. |
| Left | 35 | Capt. Jesse and Capt. Penn, R.A. | |||
| Day | 17th | ” | Right | { 32 | Lieuts. Murray and Fisher. |
| { 44 | Lieuts. James and Somerville. | ||||
| Left | 24 | Lieut. C. G. Gordon. | |||
| Night | 17th | ” | Right | 12 | Capt. Wolseley, 90th, assist. engineer. |
| Left | 23 | Capt. Armit. | |||
| Day | 18th | ” | Right | 20 | Capt. De Moleyns. |
| Left | 24 | Capt. Armit and Lieut. Jones, 46th, assistant engineer. |
During these few days, as an assault was in contemplation, the line workmen were active and pushing. Rather strong parties of sappers superintended them, who also cut and formed the embrasures, and took the lead in the new trenches where the skill of craftsmen was indispensable. The lodgment was now wholly completed, communications to it were perfected, and a boyau, issuing from the left of the quarries, had been thrown up with almost daring impertinence for about 120 yards towards the Redan. The gabions were lodged by some sappers in so ready and firm a manner it seemed as if they possessed a genius for such enterprises. Far from being reckless, they advanced, though diligently and coolly, by prudential efforts; and thus effected, so to speak, their own deliverance; while the line, less calculating the danger of their work and less of course accustomed to it, were struck down in rather serious numbers. A new battery, No. 16, for three 32-pounders, and one for four mortars, No. 17, also rose up in the vicinity of the lodgment. Rapidly they were completed with magazines, platforms, and traverses, and the guns and mortars, drawn at night to their positions by the track from Egerton’s rifle-pit, were promptly placed on their beds, armed with gunners, and worked with more or less fury as occasion served against the enemy. When all was done the half-moon chevaux-de-frise of spikes was withdrawn from the front and piled up in the lodgment.
On one of these nights ten men of the infantry under a sapper were sent to repair a bridge over which the ammunition was usually conveyed to the batteries in the third parallel. The bridge spanned the fourth boyau a little in rear of No. 13 battery of the left attack. Sergeant Drew set the men to work; but as the shelling was warm on the spot the party asked to be removed. It was of some moment to repair the smashed timbers, and the sergeant urging the men by an appeal to their courage to resume the work, said he would visit them again in ten minutes. He reappeared within the time appointed, but the whole party had decamped. Going in quest of them, he found that two of the men had been severely wounded, and the rest were carrying them on stretchers to the rear.
Looking abroad on the works which now spread over many miles of ground, meshed by cross-trenches in all directions, it was obvious that nothing had been omitted which it was in the nature of foresight, resource, or exertion to have executed. In every battery the revetments had been strengthened or rebuilt; the gabionades improved or restored, and cheeks, merlons, traverses, magazines, and every imaginable desiderata attended to with spirited pertinacity. The usual expedients for field constructions had long since began to fail, but now their deficiency was largely felt. Still never at a loss for schemes, the engineers applied all sorts of agencies, regarding nothing as crude or trivial, to perform in emergencies effectual parts in the great siege. Iron and wooden hurdles, powder-boxes and ammunition-cases, were thus pressed into the service to do the work and stand the wear of better contrivances. Frequently molested by riflemen and shelled from the batteries, the sappers and pioneers held their posts with unflinching constancy, and each succeeding night saw the restoration of the day’s havoc. Even in the glaring sunlight the most essential repairs were executed, while shot and shell were dropping around and Minié bullets were pinging over the parapets and thugging into the slopes. A rifle-screen on the right attack was erected in one night on the very edge of the cliff to sweep the ravine, which harboured in its cavities the Russian sharpshooters. It was difficult of access, but to lessen the danger of reaching it, a species of approach was formed to protect the light troops while driving into the pit. Ten men of the line prepared the screen superintended by a sapper. The 21-gun battery, as of old, received material help to make vigorous and solid its vast proportions and to mend its long inventory of damages. It was the head-quarters for the right-attack, from whence the working parties, guided by the sappers, filed off to their appointed duties. The batteries on Greenhill, the picket-house, and those in the foremost parallels, were also attended to with equal promptitude and maintained in a state remarkably efficient.
None laid the platforms or built the magazines, splinter-proofs, &c., but the sappers. Everything, indeed, which came under the denomination of artificers’ work, was executed by them. The fixing of platforms was only second in importance, as far as hazard was concerned, to the formation of the embrasures. Repeatedly the carpenters were called upon in broad daylight to render them serviceable. Relaying sprung sleepers or planks, and renewing cleets or bolts broken by the violence of the fire or a tearing recoil, were frequently attended to whilst the siege was at its highest; and the only protection which the carpenters received under such circumstances was the scanty cover of a shallow genouillère, with perhaps a sapper or two in the gorge busy mending the cheeks of a shivered embrasure. In former sieges the laying of a platform under fire was held to be an act of great personal daring; but in this wonderful enterprise, it was so much a habit of the sappers to see to this particular detail, that it passed among occurrences as a common matter.
What is an embrasure? So much has been said about it, it needs the question; and the answer may not be misplaced here. Look at one while the battle rages. It is a formal cut in a mound of earth, taking the shape of a wedge, with the broad end to the enemy, the narrow to the platform. The narrow end is called “the neck,” and possesses just width enough to admit a man or the muzzle of a gun. It then extends to the front for more than twenty feet with a widening orifice, ten or twelve feet broad at the greatest expansion, which is designated “the mouth.”
Bold men stand in rear of the opening and equally bold are they who work. With some certainty the range is known and but few shots or shells miss their mark. A ball of weighty metal strikes the embrasure, and makes a crevice to its centre, scattering the sand as in a sirocco. Another comes and gashes a well-formed cheek, blows away an angle or a shoulder, and topples into the space below, broken hide-bags from the crest and the earth that covers them. The concussion of our own guns assists to loosen the work and the hot fire of the artillerymen dries up the gabions rendering them less susceptible of resistance. These, ere long, woven with so much compactness, are broken up and strewn as in a wood-yard, and fascines unband and yield their bundles to choke up the gorge. One slope after another loses form and splay, fissures appear, stones rock and fall, and the structure totters on a few fragments. Still it bravely holds up in its ruggedness against a storm of fire. Another well-directed shell is delivered and its splinters knock everything to pieces. The feeble props at length are torn away, and all above, like an avalanche, slides upon the sole, which heaving with its own weakness gives way, and in part crumbles into the ditch. Necks, cheeks, and throat—all now have disappeared; and of the outline of that stern formation, nothing remains but a distorted mouth, with the broken wattle of gabions and the stakes of fascines sticking confusedly out along its extended jaw; and there, too, is the remnant of a sand-bag, caught upon a bending twig, waving lazily with the wind as if begging a truce.