It is strange how the sleeping brain adjusts itself to circumstances--sleeps with one eye open, as it were. I could always sleep soundly under the fire of the heavy guns, even in a redoubt, because my brain recognized that they were practically harmless when we were under cover; but as soon as the rattle of the rifles began, I invariably awoke at once with an instinctive knowledge that the fight was approaching a crisis. So it was on the night after the battle. The Russian cannon continued to boom sullenly at intervals, and, worn out with fatigue as I was, they only lulled me to a deeper slumber in my quarters in the town. Presently, however, a rifle volley rang out, quickly answered by another and another. In a second I was out of my sheepskin rug and on my verandah, from which I could see the night attack three miles away. The night was dark and drizzling; but looking in a north-easterly direction towards the line of the Janik Bair redoubts, I could see the flash of the volleys and the spirting flame of the artillery as the Russians leaped from their redoubt upon the Bash Tabiya, only one hundred and eighty yards distant from them. The Bash Tabiya was strongly garrisoned. Its heavy guns swept every yard of the ground between it and the newly captured forts; and its defenders poured an incessant hail of bullets from a triple line of rifle-barrels upon the attacking troops. To succeed under such circumstances was well nigh impossible, and after a few minutes of this awful fire the Russian remnant broke and fled back to the protection of the redoubt. It was only on the morrow that we realized what a complete victory we had won in the battle of the previous day, because we could then see plainly that the Russians had suffered terrible losses and had achieved absolutely nothing. We began to feel more secure of our position; and the wounded, who had all been sent away to the lower end of the town, were brought back again and placed in temporary hospitals near our central depot. In the previous battles we had been accustomed to send the wounded away to Sofia at once, and the wisdom of Osman Pasha's decision in this matter was now made apparent. Insufficient as was our hospital accommodation, it was doubly fortunate that we were not encumbered with the wounded from the previous battles as well, because we now had about four thousand patients to deal with, and there was no chance of sending them away because we realized at last that we were in a state of siege. The Russians were all round Plevna, and they barred the Orkhanieh road.