On the 16th January, there were furnished for the right attack a minimum party of twenty-eight linesmen and two brigades of sappers under Captain Craigie and Lieutenant De Vere of the engineers. Bitter weeks of hard weather had already been experienced, but it required no uncommon spirit and fortitude to bear up against the trials of this day. By employing only a few men and constantly relieving them, it was hoped that the batteries might be kept clear. The men could scarcely feel their tools; their clothes in a few minutes became frozen; and a mass of ice covering those hirsute arrangements to which the dire necessities of war had given rise, all that could be seen of the countenance was a couple of patches of cadaverous skin drawn tightly over protruding bones. With the line the attempt to make way against the elements was given up; but the sappers stood boldly to their work though the drift fell in quite as fast as they shovelled it out, and the snow in heavy flakes beat against them. At length, however, they abandoned, not before they were ordered, a task in which no amount of human exertion could succeed. Hobbling home benumbed in every limb with curdled blood and almost lifeless hearts, they appeared at the tents covered from head to heel in a panoply of ice. What misery followed their return few can imagine. From their great coats they shook the snow in cakes, and tore it from their beards and moustaches; then throwing themselves on their wretched pallets undressed and unbooted, sought repose in a rest that was as cold as comfortless. Equal suffering was felt on the same day by 56 sappers and 104 men of the infantry dispersed in the trenches on the Inkermann ridge. The latter attended in chief to the removal of the snow, which heaped up in pyramids to the crests of the works, choked every angle of the batteries. The former tore down the walls of a damaged magazine, revetted embrasures, and heightened the parapets. In these services their exertions were much impeded by the storm, and when withdrawn, after six hours’ exposure and labour, they waded to the camp like so many icebergs.