A benighted sportsman caught in a storm thinks he is much to be pitied, as, fagged, drenched and hungry, he plods along the hillside, and stumbles about in the dark towards some uncertain light; but he has no enemy worse than the wind and rain to face, and in the first hut he reaches repose and comfort await him. Our officers and soldiers, after a day like this, had to descend to the trenches again at night, look out for a crafty foe, to labour in the mire and ditches of the works; what fortitude and high courage to do all this without a murmur, and to bear such privations and hardships with unflinching resolution! But meantime--for one's own experience gives the best idea of the suffering of others--our tent was down; one by one we struggled out into the mud, and left behind us all our little household gods, to fly to the lee of a stone wall, behind which were cowering French and British of all arms and conditions. Major Blane was staggering from the ruins of his marquee, under a press of greatcoat, bearing up for the shelter of Pakenham's hut. The hospital tents were all down, the sick had to share the fate of the robust. On turning towards the ridge on which the imposing wooden structures of the French were erected, a few scattered planks alone met the eye. The wounded of the 5th November, who to the number of several hundred were in these buildings, had to bear the inclemency of the weather as well as they could. Several succumbed to its effects. The guard tents were down, the occupants huddled together under the side of a barn, their arms covered with mud, lying where they had been thrown from the "pile" by wind. The officers had fled to the commissariat stores near Lord Raglan's, and there found partial shelter. Inside, overturned carts, dead horses, and groups of shivering men--not a tent left standing. Mr. Cookesley had to take refuge, and was no doubt glad to find it, amid salt pork and rum puncheons. With chattering teeth and shivering limbs each man looked at his neighbour. Lord Raglan's house, with the smoke streaming from the chimneys, and its white walls standing out freshly against the black sky, was the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes." Lord Lucan, meditative as Marius amid the ruins of Carthage, was sitting up to his knees in mud, amid the wreck of his establishment. Lord Cardigan was sick on board his yacht in the harbour of Balaklava. Sir George Brown was lying wounded on board the _Agamemnon_, off Kamiesch Bay; Sir De Lacy Evans, sick and shaken, was on board the _Sanspareil_, in Balaklava; General Bentinck, wounded, was on board the _Caradoc_. The Duke of Cambridge was passing a terrible time of it in the _Retribution_, in all the horrors of that dreadful scene, off Balaklava. Pennefather, England, Campbell, Adams, Buller--in fact all the generals and officers--were as badly off as the meanest private.