Next night eight fresh sappers and one hundred linesmen were distributed in the communication, who were exposed to so harassing a fire from the Mamelon and other batteries, that Lieutenant James of the engineers had some difficulty in inducing the working party to go on steadily. The sappers, however, urged a-head, dropping gabion after gabion, checked ever and anon by an excess of fire, which caused them to stoop for shelter under the securer parapet. In about an hour, the workmen becoming cool, they handled their tools with unexpected earnestness. Sixty-three gabions—all that were brought from the abandoned parallel—were staked. Thirty-eight of them were filled, for which distance tolerable cover was thrown up. Great as was the cannonading it was singularly harmless; but just as the party were about to leave the trenches, a shell from a howitzer mounted in the works at the left of the round tower, fell into the communication, killing private Richard Walsh and wounding private George Wood and another sapper, as also two of the workmen. Each succeeding relief gave itself to the work with activity, preserving the strictest discipline. Rock had often to be removed to deepen and widen the trench, and it required at times more than usual caution and judgment in placing the gabions. Seldom were fewer than sixty fixed in prolongation of the work, but as this was always done by the flying method, the sappers were necessarily exposed during the whole distance. In returning from the head of the work, it was not an uncommon occurrence to find several of the gabions thrown down by projectiles from the Mamelon. Here, then, was the greatest danger, but not less expert than resolute, the capsized baskets were speedily reset by the overseers and adjusted to the trace. So went on the trench till the night of the 28th May, when the sappers, with admirable coolness, running along the remaining trace planted sixty-six gabions. The last gabion entered a cutting through the old international communication—a part of it free from enfilade fire. It was thus embodied with the new work and that night the confederate parallel was re-established.