These blasts sometimes cast the tent-ropes loose by uprooting the pegs, causing fears lest the pole--whereon hung the revolvers, swords, pans, and kettles of the occupants--might snap, and compel them, when hoping to enjoy a comfortable night's rest off duty, to come forth shivering from bed to grope for the loosened pegs amid the muddy soil or wet grass, and by the aid of a stone or a stray shot--if the mallet was not forthcoming--to secure them once more. This might be varied by a shower of rain, which sputtered in your face as you lay abed, till the canvas became thoroughly wetted, and so tightened. Anon it might shrink; then the ropes would strain, and unless you were in time to relax them, down might come the whole domicile in a wet mass on those who were within it. Now and then a random shot fired from Sebastopol, or the whistling shell, with a sound like t'wit-t'wit-t'wit, describing a fiery arc as it soared athwart the midnight sky on its errand of destruction, varied the silence and darkness of the hour. The clink of shovels and pickaxes came ever and anon from the trenches, where the miners and working-parties were pushing their sap towards the city. The sentinels walked their weary round, or stood still, each on his post shivering, it might be, in the passing blast, but looking fixedly and steadily towards the enemy. The rest slept soundly after their day of toil and danger, watching, starvation, and misery; forgetful of the Russian watchfires that burned in the distance, heedless of the perils of the coming day, and of _where_ the coming night might find them. And so the night would pass, till the morning bugle sounded; then the stir and bustle began, and there was no longer rest for any, from the general of the day down to the goat of the Welsh Fusileers; the cooking, and cleaning of arms, parade of reliefs for outpost and the trenches, proceeded; but these without sound of trumpet or drum, as men detailed for such duties do everything silently; neither do their sentries take any complimentary notice of officers passing near their posts. Ere long a thousand white puffs, spirting up from the broken ground between us and the city, would indicate the rifle-pits, where the skirmishers lay _en perdue_, taking quiet pot-shots at each other from behind stones, caper-bushes, sand-bags, and sap-rollers; and shimmering through haze and smoke--the blue smoke of the "villainous saltpetre"--rose the city itself, with its green spires and domes, white mansions, and bristling batteries.