The enemy now commenced another movement by collecting on the heights overlooking the plain between the redoubts, the whole strength of his cavalry—a solid menacing body, which in its heaviness threatened that day to strike a decisive blow. Meanwhile the Turks in No. 4, regarding any display of courage on their part as useless, and their position untenable, withdrew the two guns to the rear, halting them on the crest of a slope; and after spiking the ordnance and breaking the spokes of the wheels and the shafts of the carriages, tumbled them into the valley. The garrison then retired to the position where the Highlanders were drawn up. The artilleryman and sapper stood by the Turks to the last, but in the retreat each took a different direction. While sitting in the valley a short distance from the redoubt, Lords Lucan and Cardigan with their staff galloped up to the sapper, and grouped round him. Learning the cause of his presence there, he was asked what he knew of the attack. Lancaster answered to the effect that two of the forts had already been taken, and the others, having been abandoned, would, he feared, soon follow. Away rode the commanders and the staff; the trumpets sounded, and removing the cavalry behind a mound, soon after occurred those cavalry dispositions, and that extraordinary conflict, which prevented the Russians from pouring into Balaklava, and capturing the great base of the allied operations. Private Lancaster succeeded in making good his retreat, under a heavy fire, without mischance. Neglecting to erect earth-works to defend the right of the position towards Inkermann led to an attack by the Russians, which was met and repulsed with vigour on the 26th October, by the division under the command of Sir De Lacy Evans. The sappers turned out and marched to Victoria Hill, in readiness, if required, to take part in the action. A portion of them was posted behind a rubble wall in “Water” Valley, which was loopholed during the fight; and four men were in the 5-gun battery. The usual parties were also distributed to the trenches, working away in the different batteries as if the combat were at a distance. The fire on the 21-gun battery was very sharp, but under its fierceness a brigade of carpenters, directed by corporal Kester Knight, repaired a platform no less than five times in the course of two hours. It was broken each time by the heavy recoil of the gun. Once, while mending it, a shot plunged through the embrasure and shattered a wheel of the carriage; but looking upon the incident almost as one of the civilities of the siege, the carpenters continued to work vigorously till they had obtained something like the desired solidity.