First day’s work in the lodgment—Improviséd grenades—Polish fusilier—Capture of the third rifle pit—Preliminary incidents connected with it—Saps issuing from the pits—No. 13 sand-bag battery—No. 9 battery, left attack—Building a magazine in day-time—Constancy of sappers in the trenches—But little relief afforded them—Apparent want of ingenuity in their camp arrangements—Reason why so few sappers die—Their miserable condition—Regimen; its effects—Care of the baggage animals—The means employed to preserve them becomes a vexed question—Rifle holes—No. 11 battery, left attack—Generals’ and engineers’ huts—Diversified engagements of the sappers—Death of Lieutenant Carter—Progress of the works—Wells—Repairing the advance saps after a sortie—Expedition to the sea of Azoff—Storms of rain, and consequent difficulties in carrying on the works—Sortie—Effects of the rain—Endurance of the men exposed to it—Casualties. Twenty armed men from the 7th foot were appointed to labour in the captured pits on the 20th April, into which for about thirty yards they crawled on their hands and knees. Sergeant Joseph Morant was with them, so also was Lieutenant Sheehy, of the 64th, assistant-engineer, who directed their exertions. Many of the gabions had only been partly filled the previous night, and spaces of a few inches occurred here and there between the baskets. Barely had the linesmen placed their muskets at the back of the trench, when a provoking fire from the near pit and quarries, knocked over four or five of their number. Unaccustomed to work in such slight cover, very little progress was made in improving the trench, and Lieutenant Sheehy withdrew the men. Waiting a short time, twelve sappers arrived; and with four or six volunteers from the 7th regiment, the work in the approach was resumed. In four hours much had been done to strengthen it, and the parapet, in great part, was made defensible with banquettes. Finding that the trenchmen pertinaciously held to their work, the Russians tried the effect on them of a couple of great guns. The first rounds pitched high; but the next, better aimed, hurled the gabions from the trace, and dividing the parapet by an ugly chasm, separated the workmen into two parts. Those in the left of the pit, struck with stones and half blinded with sand, not seeing their danger, were about to join the main body by crossing the gap; but the warning of their comrades stopped their precipitation and confined them for a time behind a few feet of insecure revetment. Had they attempted to move, not a man would have escaped, for the muzzles of the Russian rifles, only a few yards off, would have struck them down. Hot as was the place, the sappers and volunteers continued to work, and the breach quickly filled up with sand-bags, soon extricated the men at the end of the zigzag from hazards to which less alacrity and courage would have committed them. So jealous was the enemy of any progress in this