If there had been anything going on outside he might have found the change from the sick-room bracing, but both besieged and besiegers were too busy girding their loins for another struggle to waste time or powder on useless display. The Allies had found the nut too hard to crack, and were working hard on preparation for the next blow; and those inside, fully informed of everything that went on in the camps, were straining every nerve to resist it. So big guns and mortars went toiling up to the heights from Balaclava Bay, and mountains of gabions and fascines and more big guns went toiling up the heights inside to face them, and for days hardly a shot would be fired on either side. It was towards the end of February that Greski said to Jim, one day when Tatia had turned them out-of-doors--"Come, and I will show you something new." And they went round to the eastern slope, looking out towards the Karabelnaia suburb and the Malakoff and Redan--all of which Jim knew by heart. And at the first glance Jim saw a change in the look of things. A new fort had sprung up in the night between the Malakoff, which till now had been the foremost Russian work on that side, and the French trenches--a fort of size too, all a-bristle with gabions and fascines round the crown of the flat hill. The thousands of men still working at it made it look like a great ant-heap. "French!" said Jim, after his first quick glance, with a feeling of exultation, for the new work must seriously menace, if not command, the Malakoff. "French?--no, my friend!--Russian! Truly your people are not very wideawake. Todleben has been expecting them to seize that hill ever since they crept so close, and it would have been bad for the Korniloff Bastion, you see. So, as they did not, and it seemed a pity no one should use it, he occupied it last night, and ten thousand men have been busy on it ever since." "Hang it! What fools we were to let it slip!" "Undoubtedly! And without doubt you will now try to recover it, and it will cost you many men, and us also, and so the game goes on." And that very same night, when Jack had at last fallen asleep, Greski said to Jim, as though he were inviting him to a theatre party: "At midnight we will take a little walk, and you will see your friends attempt to recover the new fort, the Mamelon. "You seem to know all about it," said Jim incredulously. "Of course. That again is where we beat you. We know all your plans. We have plans of every trench you cut with every gun you place in it." "Not from any of our men," said Jim, with heat, for underhand work such as that struck him offensively.