In the 21-gun battery the revetment of an embrasure had tumbled down and covered the muzzle of a gun. Corporal McGinn at once jumped into the aperture to remove the debris. Seeing him unassisted sergeant Joseph Morant forced among the rubbish, and while the corporal laid the bags, the sergeant shovelled up the earth and packed it to give firmness to the structure. The day was very wet, and the earth which had fallen on the sole of the embrasure, had become so muddy and greasy, they found it difficult to prevent themselves slipping into the ditch. Trying and hazardous as was the duty, the orifice was restored before the adventurers quitted it. In the same battery, Morant was speaking of by-gone times to two seamen, one of whom, named Soper, had been “a school and form fellow” of the sergeant. “This,” said he to Morant, “is not such a cricket-match as we used to have at Portsmouth, and I’d advise you to look well to your stumps.” Scarcely had he uttered the caution when a shot carried away his head, and scattered his brains over the breast of his old schoolfellow. One sapper—private Thomas Muir—was dangerously wounded in the calf of the right leg, while mending the embrasure of the right 68-pounder gun in the 21-gun battery. As sergeant Morant was marching the party down the middle ravine, he jocosely remarked to Muir, that one or the other would be struck that day. Two hours after, Muir passed on a stretcher, and seeing Morant, he called out with unmistakeable cheerfulness, “You see, sergeant, I’m the first struck;” and onwards he was borne to the camp, singing all the way, as if for the entertainment of his bearers, some of those inspiriting Scotch airs which connected his heart with home. Amputation was resorted to to save his life, but gradually sinking, he died on the 15th May. Towards the close of the day the sappers busied themselves in draining the trenches, wretchedly deep in water and mud. Sawdust was scattered on the platforms to relieve them from slipperiness. Sliding about in every direction on the unctuous soil, the heavy mortars were unmanageable, and so to help the gunners in moving them, they were supplied with iron-shod handspikes from the engineer park. At night 58 sappers were thrown into the left attack, and about 28 into the right, and through the darkness and storm, though miserably wet and cold, completed all the essential restorations by the following morning. “The officers of engineers,” writes Major-General Jones, “and sappers and miners continue active and zealous; the duty in this weather is very hard and severe upon them.”