While thus employed in No. 10 battery situated on a central projection of the second parallel, second-corporal James Fraser—a fearless young non-commissioned officer—was killed. Fraser was working in an embrasure—a mere crag, so complete was its disruption—patching up the left cheek with sandbags, while corporal McEachern was reconstructing the right one. The firing on the battery was very fierce, but the two corporals, stript to their trousers and shirts, toiled away with dauntless perseverance. “Never mind the rascals,” said Fraser, with an encouraging smile, “we’ll finish it in spite of them.” Such was his determination; but a few moments after, he was blown from the embrasure by a round shot, which carried away his right arm and the whole of his breast and ribs, exposing his quivering heart. McEachern heard the shot pass and felt the heat which its velocity imparted; and on turning round to see how his comrade had fared, he saw him doubled up on a pile of projectiles and the gunners and workmen gathering up his remains. McEachern had seen too many such catastrophes to slacken his energies, and so resuming the work as if nothing had happened he left it only when the cheeks were finished. Private John Malcolm, an hour after, was sent into the same embrasure to clear the sole, as the gun in its rear could not be sufficiently depressed to fire with advantage. Stripped to the work, he was shovelling away the debris, when a splinter from a shell struck him severely on the head. At the instant, he fell from the aperture to the platform, and the next moment a shower of fierce stones fell on him, fretting his flannel shirt as if a rasp had torn it up and wounding him in both shoulders. In the night following there were 59 sappers in the front, who were succeeded next morning by 71 men. Many laboured at the different batteries and privates John Sykes and William Orr, in charge of No. 10 battery, left attack, were named to Lord Raglan as having behaved with conspicuous zeal and coolness in removing the debris of broken gabions and split-bags from the disfigured embrasures and rebuilding the cheeks. So heavy was the fire at the time, that one gun was disabled in the battery and some of the artillery carriages injured. General Jones was an eye-witness of the manly way in which Orr entered the embrasures between the rounds of fire, and of his unruffled exertions to clear the soles and mend the revetments; and when the general had it in his power to mark, in a substantial manner, his appreciation of the private’s intrepid demeanour, he obtained for him a “distinguished service” medal and a gratuity of five pounds. Before nightfall the lodgment was made completely defensible, and a chevaux-de-frise was fixed, in the shape of a half moon, by a few sapper blacksmiths, some distance in front, to protect the working parties from sudden assaults.