The roar of the musketry and the perpetual booming of the adverse battery guns, produced a tremendous effect; awakening all the echoes of the fathomless caves of Scylla in the splintered cliffs and Mont Jaci; and after being tossed from peak to peak of the Milia Hills, with ten thousand reverberations all varying, the reports died away in the distant sky—only to be succeeded by others. The dense volumes of smoke that rose from the French batteries, were forced upwards and downwards by the stormy wind, and rolled away over land and sea, twisted into a thousand fantastic shapes; mingling on one side with the mist of the valleys, on the other with the foam of the ocean. The continual rolling of the French brass drums, the clamour of their artillerymen, and the wild hallooing of their infantry, added to the roar of the conflict above and that of the surge below, increased the effect of a scene which had as many beauties as terrors. The night of the 14th was unusually dark and stormy; and on visiting Bianca in her dreary vault (which, by being below the basement of the keep, was the only safe place in the castle) she told me, with a pale cheek and faltering tongue, that often, of late, she had been disturbed by sounds rising from the earth below her. I endeavoured to laugh away her fears: but, on listening, I heard distinctly the peculiar noise of hammers and shovels; which convinced me that the French sappers were at work somewhere, and that the hollows of the rock had enabled them to penetrate far under the foundations of the castle. On examination, we found that for three nights they had been lodging a mine, during the noise and gloom of the storm, and had excavated two chambers; one under our principal bastion, the other under the keep, connecting them by a saucisson led through a gallery cut in the solid rock: the effect of such an explosion would have ended the siege at once, and blown to atoms the vault appropriated to Bianca and her servant. My mind shrank, with horror, from contemplating the frightful death she had so narrowly escaped. Next night the train would, undoubtedly, have been fired; and the inner chamber was pierced within three feet of her bed! * * * * * * Desiring Lascelles to prepare a counter-mine in case of our failure, I slipped out by the barriers, accompanied by Santugo and twelve volunteers. Favoured by the darkness of the night, the howling of the stormy wind, and dashing of the "angry surge," we stole safely to the scene of operations, and with charged bayonets fell upon a brigade of sappeurs—as the French style a party of eight private-artificers, under the command of a non-commissioned officer. They were all as merry as crickets, talking and laughing whilst working in their shirt sleeves.