One enormous cannon-shot that struck the earth and stones threw up a cloud of dust which totally blinded the brave brigadier who led us; he was thus compelled to grope his way to the rear, while his place was taken by Lieutenant-colonel W. H. Bunbury of ours--a tried soldier, who had served in the Kohat-Pass expedition five years before this, and been Napier's aide-de-camp during the wars of India. The Honourable Colonel Handcock, who led three hundred men of the 97th and of the Perthshire Volunteers, fell mortally by a ball in the head. Colonel Lysons of ours (who served in the Canadian affair of St. Denis), though wounded in the thigh and unable to stand, remained on the ground, and with brandished sword cheered on the stormers. The actual portion of the latter followed those who bore the scaling ladders, twenty of which were apportioned to the Buffs; and no time was to be lost now, as the Russians from the Malakoff, inflamed by blood, defeat, and fury, were rushing down in hordes to aid in the defence of the Redan. In crossing the open ground between our trenches and the point of attack, some of the ladders were lost or left behind, in consequence of their bearers being shot down; yet we reached the edge of the ditch and planted several without much difficulty, till the Russians, after flocking to the traverses which enfiladed them, opened a murderous fusillade upon those who were crossing or getting into the embrasures, when we planted them on the other side; and then so many officers and men perished, that Windham and three of the former were the only leaders of parties who got in untouched. The scene in the ditch, where the dead and the dying, the bleeding, the panting, and exhausted lay over each other three or four deep, was beyond description; and at a place called the Picket House was one solitary English lady, watching this terrible assault, breathless and pale, putting up prayers with her white lips; and her emotions at such a time may be imagined when I mention that she was the wife of an officer engaged in the assault, Colonel H----, whose body was soon after borne past her on a stretcher.