About an hour after midnight on the 8th, sergeant Drew had dismissed a working party under charge of second-corporal Fraser employed in forming rifle-pits in advance of the third parallel. Retiring together, they resolved to visit the caves known by the name of the “Ovens,” then the post of the advanced picquet, to see a communication, which had been much talked of by the sappers, cut through the solid rock by private Simon Williams, by which an unexposed track was open from cave to cave. They were dressed at the time in Mackintoshes, fur caps, and long boots. The officer in charge of the picquet at the “Ovens,” apparently unaware that works were in progress in his front, was struck with the intrusion of the visitors and captured them as spies. Speaking good English was no proof they were not Russians, and accordingly they were sent to the field-officer of the trenches, Lord West, under a strong sergeant’s escort. Trying to guide it by a nearer way than the one it was taking, was received as a certain indication of their character, for the guard fancied “the spies” were planning to beguile them into Sebastopol. Indeed they had some misgiving that the two sappers were a couple of clever desperadoes, ready for any cruel work that their evil natures might prompt them to perpetrate. The escort therefore marched, brimful of caution, with the prisoners, and were only too glad, on reaching the goal, to be rid of such a pair of suspicious adventurers. On being confronted with his lordship, he asked them many searching queries, to which they gave remarkably accurate replies; but the question of their identity was at length settled by Captain Armit, the engineer officer on duty for the night who had just returned from the rifle-pits by another route. Of course they were at once released, and many a good laugh was enjoyed at the pardonable blunder of capturing two honest sappers as Russian spies. Water in the trenches had now become scarce; indeed, the cisterns in the 21-gun battery, formed of barrels, were dry. This gave rise to the prudent precaution of sending the working parties to the lines with full canteens. New wells were immediately sunk by the sappers in the quarries of the 21-gun battery, and cans, barrels, and metal powder cases deposited in promising spots along the parallels, to allure the springs to the desired outlets. Very limited was the area for exploring, and the water therefore was never sufficiently plentiful to relieve the workmen from the necessity of filling their water-bottles prior to entering the batteries. About a fortnight later, the well in the second parallel on the right attack yielded a fair supply. It was a sort of pool of Siloam for the weary and thirsty, and to shield them from casualty in their pilgrimage to it, the assiduous efforts of 4 sappers and 20 linesmen threw up a parapet with sufficient altitude, to afford them convenient shelter.