culated in a manner most unusual for people so generally placid and stolid.

At half-past eleven A.M. the pipes of the Highland Brigade were heard, as it marched in from Kamara, and got into position in reserve of the right attack; and the fine appearance of the men of those mountains

'the backbone of Britain,' as Pope Sylvester called them of old -elicited a hearty cheer from the Royal Welsh as they defiled past, with all their black plumes and striped tartans waving in the biting wind.

During all the preceding day, the batteries had thundered in salvoes against Sebastopol; and hence vast gaps were now visible in the streets and principal edifices, most of which were half hidden in lurid sheets of fire; and by the bridge of boats that lay between the north and south side, thousands of fugitives, laden with their goods and household lares, their children, sick, and aged, had been seen to pour so long as light remained.

Until the French began to move, the eyes of all in our division were turned on our famous point of attack-the Redan; and I may inform the non-military reader that a redan, in field fortification, means simply an indented work with lines and faces; but this one resembled an unfinished square, with two sides meeting at the salient angle in front of our parallels, i. e. the trenches by which we had dug our way under cover towards it.

With a strong reinforcement, Nicholaevitch Tolstoff, now, as before stated, a general, had entered the Redan by its rear or open face; and since his advent it had been greatly strengthened. In the walls of the parapet he had constructed little chambers roofed with sacks of earth, and these secure places rendered the defenders quite safe from falling shells. In the embra

sures were excavations wherein the gunners might repose close by their guns, but ever armed and accoutred; and by a series of trenches it communicated with the great clumsy edifice known as the Malakoff Tower.

By a road to the right, the Redan also communicated with the extensive quadrangle of buildings forming the Russian barracks, one hundred yards distant; and in its rear there lay the Artillery or Dockyard Creek. The flat caps, and in other instances the round glazed helmets of the Russians, and the points of their bayonets, bristling like a hedge of steel, could be seen above the lines of its defence and at the deeply-cut embrasures, where the black cannon of enormous calibre peered grimly down upon us. Our arrangements were very simple. At noon the French were to attack the Malakoff; and as soon as they fell to work, we were to assault the Redan, and I had volunteered for the scaling-ladder party, which consisted of 320 picked men of the Kentish Buffs and 97th or Ulster Regiment.

In the trenches of our left attack could be seen the black bearskins of our Brigade of Guards, and massed in dusky column on the hill before their camp, their red now changed to a very neutral tint indeed, were the slender battalions of the Third Division, motionless and still, save when the wind rustled the tattered silk of the colours, or the sword of an officer gleamed as he dressed the ranks. A cross cannonade was maintained, as usual, between our batteries and those of the enemy. The balls were skipping about in all directions, and several 'roving Englishmen,' adventurous tourists, own correspondents,' and unwary amateurs, who were there, had to scuttle for their lives to some place of shelter. As I joined the ladder-party, I

6

could not help thinking of many a past episode in my life; of Estelle, who had been false; of Valerie, who was lost to me; and of the suspicion that Winifred Lloyd loved me. Ere another hour, I might be lying dead before the Redan, and there forget them all!

Our covering-party consisted of 200 of the Buffs and Rifles, under Captain Lewes; but alas for the weakness of our force, as compared with thousands of men to oppose! The strength of the Second Division detailed against the Redan consisted only of 760 men of the 3rd, 41st, and 62nd regiments, with a working party of 100 from the Royal Welsh. The rest of Colonel Windham's brigade was in reserve.

Brigadier Shirley, who was to command the whole, had been ill on board ship; but the moment the gallant fellow heard that an assault was resolved on, he hastened to join us. Prior, however, to his coming, Colonel Windham and Colonel Unett of the 29th were deciding which of them should take precedence in leading the attack.

They coolly tossed up a shilling, and the latter won. Thus he had the alternative of saying whether he would go first, or follow Windham; but a glow spread over his face, and he exclaimed,

'I have made my choice, and I shall be the first man inside the Redan!'

However, it was doomed to be otherwise, as soon afterwards a ball from the abattis severely wounded and disabled him. When we had seen that our men had carefully loaded and capped and cast loose their cartridges, all became very still, and there was certainly more of thought than conversation among

us.

Many of the men in some regiments were little better than raw recruits, and were scarcely masters of their musketry drill. Disease in

camp and death in action had fast thinned our ranks of the carefullytrained and well-disciplined soldiers who landed in Bulgaria; and when these-the pest and bullet-failed, the treachery of contractors, and the general mismanagement of the red-tapists, did the rest.

Accustomed as we had been to the daily incidents of this protracted siege, there was a great hush over all our ranks; the hush of anticipation, and perhaps of grave reflection, came to the lightest-hearted and most heedless there.

'What is the signal for us to advance?' I inquired.

6

Four rockets,' replied Dyneley, our adjutant, who was on foot, with his sword drawn, and a revolver in his belt.

"There go the French to attack the tower!' cried Gwynne; and then a hum of admiration stole along our lines as we saw them, at precisely five minutes to twelve o'clock, 'like a swarm of bees,' issue from their trenches, the Linesmen in képis and long blue coats, the Zouaves in turbans and baggy red breeches, under a terrible shower of cannon and musketry, fiery in their valour, quick, ardent, and eager! They swept over the little space of open ground that lay between the head of their sap, and, irresistible in their number, poured on a sea of armed men, a living tide, a human surge, section after section and regiment after regiment, to the assault.

'O'er ditch and stream, o'er crest and wall, They jump and swarm, they rise and fall; With vives and cris, with cheers and cries, Like thunderings in autumnal skies; Till every foot of ground is mud, With tears and brains and bones and blood. Yet, faith, it was a grim delight To see the little devils fight!' With wonderful speed and force, their thousands seemed to drift through the gaping embrasures of the tower, which appeared to swallow them up-all save the dead and dying, who covered the slope

of the glacis; and in two minutes more the tricolour of France was waving on the summit of the Korniloff bastion!

But the work of the brave French did not end there. From twelve till seven at night, they had to meet and repulse innumerable attempts of the Russians to regain what they had lost the great tower, which was really the key of the city; till, in weariness and despair, the latter withdrew, leaving the slopes covered with corpses that could only be reckoned by thousands.

The moment the French standard fluttered out above the blue smoke and grimy dust of the tower, a vibration seemed to pass along all our ranks. Every face lit up; every eye kindled; every man instinctively grasped more tightly the barrel of his musket, or the blade of his sword, or set his cap more firmly on his head, for the final rush.

"The tricolour is on the Malakoff! By heavens, the French are in hurrah!' cried several officers.

'Hurrah!' responded the stormers of the Light and Second Divisions.

'There go the rockets!' cried Phil Caradoc, pointing with his sword to where the tiny jets of sparkles were seen to curve in the wind against the dull leaden sky, their explosion unheard amid the roar of musketry and of human voices in and beyond the Malakoff.

'Ladders, to the front! eight men per ladder!' said Welsford, of the 97th.

'It is our turn now, lads; forward, forward!' added some one else - Raymond Mostyn, of the Rifles, I think.

'There is a five-pound note offered to the first man inside the Redan!' exclaimed little Owen Tudor, a drummer of ours, as he slung his drum and went scouring to the

front; but a bullet killed the poor boy instantly, and Welsford had his head literally blown off by a cannon-ball.

In their dark-green uniforms, which were patched with many a rag, a hundred men of the Rifle Brigade who carried the scaling ladders preceded us; and the moment they and we began to issue, which we did at a furious run, with bayonets fixed and rifles at the short trail, from the head of the trenches, the cannon of the Redan opened a withering fire upon us. The round shot tore up the earth beneath our feet, or swept men away by entire sections, strewing limbs and other fragments of humanity everywhere; the exploding shells also dealt death and mutilation; the grape and canister swept past in whistling showers; and wicked little shrapnels were flying through the air like black spots against the sky; while with a hearty and genuine English hurrah that deepened into a species of fierce roar, we swept towards the ditch which so few of us might live to recross.

Thick fall our dead on every hand, and the hoarse boom of the cannon is sounding deep amid the roar of the concentrated musketry. Crawling and limping back to the trenches for succour and shelter, the groaning or shrieking wounded are already pouring in hundreds to the rear, reeking with blood; and, within a minute, the whole slope of the Redan is covered with our red-coats-the dead or the helpless -thick as the leaves lie when forests are rended' !

CHAPTER LV.

INSIDE THE REDAN.

ONE enormous cannon-shot that struck the earth and stones threw up a cloud of dust which totally

blinded the brave brigadier who led us; he was thus compelled to grope his way to the rear, while his place was taken by Lieutenantcolonel W. H. Bunbury of ours-a tried soldier, who had served in the Kohat-Pass expedition five years before this, and been Napier's aidede-camp during the wars of India. The Honourable Colonel Handcock, who led three hundred men of the 97th and of the Perthshire Volunteers, fell mortally wounded by a ball in the head. Colonel Lysons of ours (who served in the Canadian affair of St. Denis), though wounded in the thigh and unable to stand, remained on the ground, and with brandished sword cheered on the stormers.

The actual portion of the latter followed those who bore the scaling ladders, twenty of which were apportioned to the Buffs; and no time was to be lost now, as the Russians from the Malakoff, inflamed by blood, defeat, and fury, were rushing down in hordes to aid in the defence of the Redan.

In crossing the open ground between our trenches and the point of attack, some of the ladders were lost or left behind, in consequence of their bearers being shot down; yet we reached the edge of the ditch and planted several without much difficulty, till the Russians, after flocking to the traverses which enfiladed them, opened a murderous fusillade upon those who were crossing or getting into the embrasures, when we planted them on the other side; and then so many officers and men perished, that Windham and three of the former were the only leaders of parties who got in untouched.

The scene in the ditch, where the dead and the dying, the bleeding, the panting, and exhausted lay over each other three or four deep, was beyond description; and at a place called the Picket House was

one solitary English lady, watching this terrible assault, breathless and pale, putting up prayers with her white lips; and her emotions at such a time may be imagined when I mention that she was the wife of an officer engaged in the assault, Colonel H, whose body was soon after borne past her on a stretcher.

When my ladder was planted firmly, I went up with the stormers, men of all regiments mixed pellmell, Buffs and Royal Welsh, 90th and 97th. A gun, depressed and loaded with grape, belched a volume of flame and iron past me as I sprang, sword in hand, into the embrasure, firing my revolver almost at random; and the stormers, their faces flushed with ardour and fierce excitement, cheering, stabbing with the bayonet, smashing with the butt-end, or firing wildly, swarmed in at every aperture, and bore the Russians back. But I, being suddenly wedged among a number of killed and wounded men, between the cannon and the side of the embrasure, could neither advance nor retire, till dragged out by the strong hand of poor Charley Gwynne, who fell a minute after, shot dead; and for some seconds, while in that most exposed and terrible position, I saw a dreadful scene of slaughter before me; for there were dense gray masses of the Russian infantry, their usually stolid visages inflamed by hate, ferocity, by fiery vodka and religious rancour, the front ranks kneeling as if to receive cavalry, and all the rear ranks, which were three or four deep, firing over each other's heads, exactly as we are told the Scottish brigades of the 'Lion of the North' did at Leipzig, to the annihilation of those of Count Tilly.

We were fairly IN this terrible Redan; but the weakness of our force was soon painfully apparent,

and in short, when the enemy made a united rush at us, they drove us all into an angle of the work, and ultimately over the parapet to the outer slope, where men of the Light and Second Divisions were packed in a dense mass and firing into it, which they continued to do even till their ammunition became expended, when fresh supplies from the pouches of those in rear were handed to those in front.

An hour and half of this disastrous strife elapsed, the Russians having cleared the Redan,' to quote the trite description of Russell, but not yet being in possession of its parapets, when they made a second charge with bayonets under a heavy fire of musketry, and throwing great quantities of large stones, grape, and small round shot, drove those in front back upon the men in rear, who were thrown into the ditch. The gabions in the parapet now gave way, and rolled down with those who were upon them; and the men in rear, thinking all was lost, retired into the fifth parallel.'

Many men were buried alive in the ditch by the falling earth; Dora's admirer, poor little Tom Clavell of the 19th, among others, perished thus horribly.

fellow-lift me up-gently, so-so -thank you.'

I passed an arm under him and raised his head, removing at the same time his heavy Fusileer cap. There was a gurgle in his throat, and the foam of agony came on his handsome brown moustache.

'I am going fast,' said he, grasping my hand; 'God bless you, Harry-see me buried alone.'

If I escape-but there is yet hope for you, Phil.'

But he shook his head and said, while his eye kindled,

'If I was not exactly the first man in, I was not long behind Windham. I risked my life freely,' he added in a voice so low that I heard him with difficulty amid the din of the desultory fire, and the mingled roar of other sounds in and around the Malakoff; yet I should like to have gone home and seen my dear old mother once again, in green Llangollen-and her-she, you know who I mean, Harry. But God has willed it all otherwise, and I suppose it is for the best... ... Turn me on my side. . . dear fellow-so..... I am easier now.'

As I did what he desired, his warm blood poured upon my hand, through the orifice in his poor, faded, and patched regimentals, never so much as then like 'the old red coat that tells of England's glory.'

'Have the Third or Fourth Division come yet? Where are the Scots Royals?' he asked eagerly, and then, without waiting for a

added very faintly, 'If spared to see her-Winny Lloyd-tell her that my last thoughts were of her -ay, as much as of my poor mother

...

and . . . that though she will get a better fellow than I-''· "That is impossible, Phil!' 'She can never get one who .. who loves her more. The time is near now when I shall be