During these few days, as an assault was in contemplation, the line workmen were active and pushing. Rather strong parties of sappers superintended them, who also cut and formed the embrasures, and took the lead in the new trenches where the skill of craftsmen was indispensable. The lodgment was now wholly completed, communications to it were perfected, and a boyau, issuing from the left of the quarries, had been thrown up with almost daring impertinence for about 120 yards towards the Redan. The gabions were lodged by some sappers in so ready and firm a manner it seemed as if they possessed a genius for such enterprises. Far from being reckless, they advanced, though diligently and coolly, by prudential efforts; and thus effected, so to speak, their own deliverance; while the line, less calculating the danger of their work and less of course accustomed to it, were struck down in rather serious numbers. A new battery, No. 16, for three 32-pounders, and one for four mortars, No. 17, also rose up in the vicinity of the lodgment. Rapidly they were completed with magazines, platforms, and traverses, and the guns and mortars, drawn at night to their positions by the track from Egerton’s rifle-pit, were promptly placed on their beds, armed with gunners, and worked with more or less fury as occasion served against the enemy. When all was done the half-moon chevaux-de-frise of spikes was withdrawn from the front and piled up in the lodgment. On one of these nights ten men of the infantry under a sapper were sent to repair a bridge over which the ammunition was usually conveyed to the batteries in the third parallel. The bridge spanned the fourth boyau a little in rear of No. 13 battery of the left attack. Sergeant Drew set the men to work; but as the shelling was warm on the spot the party asked to be removed. It was of some moment to repair the smashed timbers, and the sergeant urging the men by an appeal to their courage to resume the work, said he would visit them again in ten minutes. He reappeared within the time appointed, but the whole party had decamped. Going in quest of them, he found that two of the men had been severely wounded, and the rest were carrying them on stretchers to the rear.