The day passed as usual in exciting and desultory firing, the Russians and our fellows watching each other like lynxes, and never missing an opportunity for taking a quiet shot at each other. A strong battalion of the former was in our front, lurking among some mounds and thick _abattis_, formed of trees felled and pegged to the earth with their branches towards us; and above the barrier and the broken ground that lay between it and the advanced trench-ground, strewed with fragments of rusty iron nails, broken bottles, and the other amiable contents of exploded bombs, torn, rent, upheaved, or sunk into deep holes by the explosion of mines and countermines, shells and rockets, we could see their bearded visages, their flat caps and tall figures, cross-belted and clad in long gray shapeless coats, as from time to time they yelled and started up to take aim at some unwary Welsh Fusileer, heedless that from some _other_ point some comrade's bullet avenged him, or anticipated his fate. To attempt a description of the trenches to a non-military reader, in what Byron terms "engineering slang," would be useless, perhaps; suffice it to say that we were pretty secure from round shot, but never from shells, the trenches or zigzags being dug fairly parallel to the opposing batteries, with a thick bank of earth towards Sebastopol, a banquette for our men to mount on when firing became necessary. Near us was a battery manned by our Royal Artillery--the guns being run through rude portholes made in the earthen bank, with the addition of sand-bags, baskets, and stuffed gabions, to protect the gunners. All was in splendid order there: the breeching-guns ever ready for action; the sponges, rammers, and handspikes lying beside the wheels; the shot piled close by as tidily as if in Woolwich-yard; the carbines of the men placed in racks against the gabions; the officers laughing over an old _Punch_, or making sketches, varied by caricatures of the Russians, their men sitting close by in their greatcoats, smoking and singing while awaiting orders, and listening with perfect indifference to the casual dropping fire maintained by us against the enemy in the abbatis or pits along our front, though almost every shot was the knell of a human existence. Death and danger were now strangely familiar to us all, and we cared as little for the _whish_ of a round bullet or the sharp _ping_ of the Minie, while it cut the air, as for the deep hoarse booming of the breaching-guns; it was the cry of "bomb!" from the look out men, that usually made us start, and sprawl on our faces, or scamper away, for shelter, to crouch with our heads stooped in our favourite or fancied places of security among the gabions, till a soaring monster, with death and mutilation in its womb, with its hoarse puffing that rose to a whistle, concussed all the air by the crash of its explosion.