Soon after commencing No. 11, the firing into it was very hot one morning. Corporal Hollis had charge of 200 men engaged in various details connected with its progress, the bulk of the workmen being scattered over the shelving rocks of the ravine in rear, collecting earth from the nooks and hollows to fill the sand-bags. Shells played on them from the bastion du Mât and an unseen battery near the creek, which killed three men and wounded four others. Grumbling at an exposure which was considered to be uncalled for, 150 of them were withdrawn; and as the 50 that remained scarcely cared to prolong a stay which cost them now and then a casualty, it was pleasant, amid so much hesitation, to see one cool fellow doing his duty. Private Clubb, who was drilling a hole to blast the foundation for a platform, was sitting behind a full gabion that blinded the neck of a partly-cut embrasure, and being intended for a sea-service gun, it had a genoullère only about a foot in height. Presently he was covered with earth by a shot which struck the gabion and passed a few inches over his head into the ravine in rear. “That’s close shaving, Hollis,” said he, looking up with a calm smile without losing his hold of the jumper; and thinking the incident undeserving of any further notice, he retained his seat and resumed the boring with as much unconcern as if he knew nothing of fear. A batch of rifle-pits on the left attack, commenced in front of Nos. 7 and 8 batteries, subsequently became an extended series of screens, spotting the ridge on its very brow, each connected with the other by an approach, which, in time, encircled the hill and formed a continuous line of intrenchment for musketry fire within fair range of the enemy’s batteries and quarries. As the nights were bright, a heavy cross fire of shells and grape was constantly poured upon the sappers and workmen, that rendered the operation as trying as perilous; but it well repaid the trouble and courage exercised in its construction, as the riflemen picked off the Russian gunners, and thus silenced some of the ordnance which cannonaded the trenches from the Redan and barrack batteries. The round-hill trench—an astonishing achievement of persevering skill and courage, formed, for the most part, through rock at an extraordinary outlay of labour, under very adverse circumstances and interruptions from the galling play of musketry and artillery—was designated the fourth parallel, and though it was at no time armed with a battery, it was mailed at all points with selected light troops.