Eventually, on the morning of the 17th October, the first bombardment of Sebastopol commenced, the heavy Lancaster battery opening fire about 6 a.m. The noise was terrific, for very soon both allies and Russians were engaged in a tremendous artillery duel. The earth shook, dense volumes of smoke hung over Sebastopol and about the allies’ batteries, and shot and shell flew screeching through the air. About midday, when the fleets joined in, the din was redoubled. On both sides losses, both in men and armament, were severe. Some would serve the guns; others, with pick and spade, would, under heavy fire, repair breaches in the earthworks; others would rush hither and thither with pails of water to extinguish fires which now and again broke out in the timber of the batteries; others again bore off the wounded on litters to a place of safety--but each and all worked with a will, and never for an instant did the terrific fire slacken. Now and again the smoke would lift for a moment, and some measure of the damage done on either side would be hastily gauged. Great bravery was displayed by besiegers and besieged, and humour as usual found its way into such an incongruous place. “I say, lads,” said a young Scot, one of the redoubtable Black Watch; “I dinna think there’ll be many kail-pots boiling in Sebastopol the day!” Nor were there! The Russian admiral, Korniloff, over and over again exposed himself to shot and shell as he rode round from point to point of the defences, and at length so often was he bespattered with sand and stones thrown up on all sides from the earthworks, that he handed his watch over to a courier, telling him to give it to his wife. “I am afraid that here it will get broken,” he added, humourously. Before eleven o’clock the brave man had breathed his last. As he was descending the Malakoff after taking fresh instructions to the gunners of that fort, a shell tore his left thigh, and sadly his aide-de-camp and others bore him to the hospital. There, stretched upon a mattress of agony, the somewhat inaccurate news was brought him that the British guns were at length silenced, and with his last breath he cried “Hurrah!” dying, as he had lived, a brave man and noble foe. Meantime in the French part of the field of action disasters had fallen thick and heavy. A well-directed Russian shell about nine o’clock burst in a French magazine on Mount Rodolph, the French main battery of attack, and with a terrific noise, heard even above the thunder of the arms, the men surrounding it were lifted sky high, the bodies falling round in dozens. A second explosion in the French lines just afterwards, silenced their land artillery for the day, the attack being maintained by the British artillery and by the allied fleets.