This service will bear a little elucidation. At dusk the previous evening, the four sappers went into the trench issuing from the first captured pit, to reconnoitre. Each selected his own place to look out, but Harvey having crawled round the head of the sap on all fours, watched for a few minutes the operations in front. The Russians were busy in the screen, and seeing one more bold than the rest strengthening the parapet, Harvey remarked, as he returned to the trench, it was strange that the sentry, a man of the 88th, did not pick him off. He was a Milesian was the 88th man, and a good deal irate to think that, though he felt sure he could lessen the number in the pit by at least the head which dared now and then to overlook the parapet, he was under orders not to fire: but when he learned from Harvey that the pit was to be captured in the morning, the sentry, forgetting his orders, discharged a bullet at the Russian, and thus brought on a fire which produced a number of casualties. Taking up the arms of a wounded man, Harvey, mounting the parapet with others, blazed away till he was called from the summit by Lieut.-Colonel Tylden to answer for his conduct in bringing an unnecessary fire of musketry on the sap. He had been reported by the officer of the line on duty there as the cause of it; but a few words of explanation made clear the misunderstanding, and Harvey, the first to volunteer for the assault, was so conspicuous in his exertions to raze the screen, that he was subsequently distinguished by a medal for gallant behaviour, and received a gratuity of five pounds. It was well that the firing took place as it did, for to its warmth is no doubt attributable the evacuation of the pit without a hand-to-hand encounter. It was not long before these pits were incorporated with the besiegers’ works by communications hastily thrown up and revetted despite the accurate firing of the enemy’s riflemen; and they held so prominent a place in the tactics of the engineers, that in an after period they formed the outlet for a sortie upon the celebrated quarries. A flying sap from the screens was early extended to the left as far as the rim of the hill overlooking the Woronzoff road, and again to the right, in line with a row of pits still possessed by the Russians, and which run along the whole extent of the quarries. The cover in the lodgment was almost made impenetrable by the sappers who erected a wall of gabions, sand-bags and stones intermixed, as far as the very edge of the ridge.