As the morning arose with renewed demands and dangers the engineers for the day were early astir, and the works so gravely handled by the enemy’s fire still looked haughty and imposing. To a working party of 480 linesmen there were 50 sappers, who, for the most part, were detailed to the 21-gun battery, upon which the fire from the Redan had a mischievous effect. Worn and battered as it was the embrasures were repaired without any appreciable interruption of the besiegers’ fire. Between the rounds the sappers leaped into the apertures and built up as much of their cratered faces as the activity they could command permitted. Those working in the left advanced approach towards the crest of the hill overlooking the Woronzoff road were much impeded by discharges of round shot and musketry from the Redan, during which, flying on with the sap, private John Lethbridge and one of the working party were killed. “The conduct of the officers and men,” wrote Major-General Jones, “has been such as to merit the warmest approbation of the Major-General commanding; the duties on which they have been employed being most arduous and requiring the greatest steadiness.” Next night 87 sappers were in the trenches, and in the succeeding day 60. The 21-gun battery, cleared of its old gabions and fascines, was resuscitated by the morning and fired well in the day’s struggle. Advantages always seem to be chased away or ridden over by catastrophes, for a magazine in the centre of the work, visited by a shell which obtruded at the door, blew up and killed a gunner and wounded eight or nine more. Out of about thirty magazines on the right attack this was the only one, after eight days’ firing, which broke up and collapsed. Fifty-five sappers were allotted to the left attack, where No. 9 battery, commenced on the 14th April, was in course of completion. It was cut for six pieces of ordnance; the rock cropping up to the surface was blasted by some miners of the corps and the broken stones were built into the parapet. Soil to fill the gabions was brought in basket-loads from a sand cave on the left of the second parallel, which subsequently was converted into a magazine for ammunition. Alderson platforms were laid in the battery by the sapper carpenters on the 16th with so much expedition that their usefulness and skill were noticed with encouraging commendation. The battery was completed and armed by the 23rd.