However, it was doomed to be otherwise, as soon afterwards a ball from the abattis severely wounded and disabled him. When we had seen that our men had carefully loaded and capped and cast loose their cartridges, all became very still, and there was certainly more of thought than conversation among us. Many of the men in some regiments were little better than raw recruits, and were scarcely masters of their musketry drill. Disease in camp and death in action had fast thinned our ranks of the carefully-trained and well-disciplined soldiers who landed in Bulgaria; and when these--the pest and bullet--failed, the treachery of contractors, and the general mismanagement of the red-tapists, did the rest. Accustomed as we had been to the daily incidents of this protracted siege, there was a great hush over all our ranks; the hush of anticipation, and perhaps of grave reflection, came to the lightest-hearted and most heedless there. "What is the signal for us to advance?" I inquired. "Four rockets," replied Dyneley, our adjutant, who was on foot, with his sword drawn, and a revolver in his belt. "There go the French to attack the tower!" cried Gwynne; and then a hum of admiration stole along our lines as we saw them, at precisely five minutes to twelve o'clock, "like a swarm of bees," issue from their trenches, the Linesmen in kepis and long blue coats, the Zouaves in turbans and baggy red breeches, under a terrible shower of cannon and musketry, fiery in their valour, quick, ardent, and eager! They swept over the little space of open ground that lay between the head of their sap, and, irresistible in their number, poured on a sea of armed men, a living tide, a human surge, section after section, and regiment after regiment, to the assault. "O'er ditch and stream, o'er crest and wall, They jump and swarm, they rise and fall; With _vives_ and _cris_, with cheers and cries. Like thunderings in autumnal skies; Till every foot of ground is mud, With tears and brains and bones and blood. Yet, faith, it was a grim delight To see the little devils fight!" With wonderful speed and force, their thousands seemed to drift through the gaping embrasures of the tower, which appeared to swallow them up--all save the dead and dying, who covered the slope of the glacis; and in _two_ minutes more the tricolor of France was waving on the summit of the Korniloff bastion!