Everywhere the lines continued to be prosecuted with commendable rapidity, and to claim even the fastidious attention of the sappers with regard to the smoothness and accuracy of the slopes of the interior revetments and the sharpness of the angles. The Madras platforms, to which a high reputation was attached, were quickly laid for the general siege-pieces, and common ones were fixed for the naval guns. There were times, however, when, from the guiding sappers missing their way to the appointed hill, the works were somewhat retarded in their execution. An instance of this kind occurred on the 10th October, when some sappers, sent to throw up a battery in front of the right of the light division, could not discover the position. The night was densely dark, foggy, and close. For more than two hours they endeavoured to find the points marked previously by Major Gordon, but finally seeing the fruitlessness of their efforts, they quitted the front and returned to camp. The working parties were retained in rear under cover; the only men exposed on the hill-top that night were two captains of engineers, and sergeant Coppin and lance-corporals Stupple and Kerr. A more serious mistake occurred, the next night. Ground had been broken at eight o’clock by a working party of 400 men on the brow of a hill to the left of the light division. Sergeant Joseph Morant, who had received instructions as to the direction he was to take to reach the work, started at midnight with seventeen sappers to relieve the men of the corps whose tour of night-duty had expired. Marching along the Woronzoff ravine, he passed a huge boulder on which was carved a cross, and shortly after reached a large shell which had stuck in the middle of the road. These, for want of better indications, were two of the points on which he relied for the accuracy of his course. Having still to press on for another half-mile and more, and the night being dark, he missed the hollow up which he was to move to the site of the parallel. On he went with his men, when, seeing at length on either height a picquet, he hesitated under an impression he had gone too far; but private George Harvey, apparently priding himself upon his knowledge of the locality, persisted in saying that the picquets were British. Unable to trust to his own sight, for his vision was defective, the sergeant, thus assured, pushed forward steadily with the party, till he observed a few yards in his front, an outpost drawn up across the road. The sappers now halted, and the two parties strained their eyes in surprise at this unexpected proximity. Morant, who was intently looking about him, struck against a wooden pillar of some altitude, streaked with painted bands of alternate black and white-supposed to be a milestone. By this his conviction was settled that the Russians were facing him. Alarmed at the visit, the enemy’s picquet fell back on the main body, and Morant just then gave