Day and night the companies furnished parties equivalent to their strength for the inexhaustible wants of the siege. Batteries misshapen and tottering, put on stubborn and threatening aspects after a few hours’ toil. New armaments were made up, new batteries opened; and to ensure their stedfastness, one at least boasted of a parapet 26 feet thick. This was No. 13, a sand-bag battery on the right attack. Approaches by the stealthy boyau were cautiously cut, but invariably opposed by vigilant sharpshooters who held positions in screened defences. For any one work, few only of the sappers could be spared. Half a brigade was in this sap, half in that; two or three were in the right rifle-pits, two or more in the left; nine in the most advanced trenches placing gabions and protecting themselves by heaping up earth from the tops of barren rocks; four at the communication between the caves at the advanced post, and others deputed to an infinite variety of field employment. So passed on the siege to the 19th April; and taking the interval from the 17th, only one sapper, private James Queen, was killed. He was shot through the head by a rifle-bullet. “Up to this time,” says the record, “the repairs to the batteries injured by the enemy’s fire have throughout been performed in a very satisfactory manner by the sappers, many of whom have been particularly active and zealous.” To the list of names already honourably mentioned, must be added that of private James Lancaster of the 3rd company. Being a powerful man, whom no amount of exertion could tire, he was conspicuous for his very good work and coolness in forming a communication from the left of No. 7 battery to the “Ovens.” He was the leading sapper in scarping the rock under corporal Joseph T. Collins, and continued with abiding zeal at this heavy service, though a constant rifle firing was maintained on the work.