Looking abroad on the works which now spread over many miles of ground, meshed by cross-trenches in all directions, it was obvious that nothing had been omitted which it was in the nature of foresight, resource, or exertion to have executed. In every battery the revetments had been strengthened or rebuilt; the gabionades improved or restored, and cheeks, merlons, traverses, magazines, and every imaginable desiderata attended to with spirited pertinacity. The usual expedients for field constructions had long since began to fail, but now their deficiency was largely felt. Still never at a loss for schemes, the engineers applied all sorts of agencies, regarding nothing as crude or trivial, to perform in emergencies effectual parts in the great siege. Iron and wooden hurdles, powder-boxes and ammunition-cases, were thus pressed into the service to do the work and stand the wear of better contrivances. Frequently molested by riflemen and shelled from the batteries, the sappers and pioneers held their posts with unflinching constancy, and each succeeding night saw the restoration of the day’s havoc. Even in the glaring sunlight the most essential repairs were executed, while shot and shell were dropping around and Minié bullets were pinging over the parapets and thugging into the slopes. A rifle-screen on the right attack was erected in one night on the very edge of the cliff to sweep the ravine, which harboured in its cavities the Russian sharpshooters. It was difficult of access, but to lessen the danger of reaching it, a species of approach was formed to protect the light troops while driving into the pit. Ten men of the line prepared the screen superintended by a sapper. The 21-gun battery, as of old, received material help to make vigorous and solid its vast proportions and to mend its long inventory of damages. It was the head-quarters for the right-attack, from whence the working parties, guided by the sappers, filed off to their appointed duties. The batteries on Greenhill, the picket-house, and those in the foremost parallels, were also attended to with equal promptitude and maintained in a state remarkably efficient.