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Next morning 400 of the English marched round behind the hills, to the north west of the harbour, setting fire to all the houses and stores, till they came within a mile of the Royal Battery.
The enemy crossing in force, lower down the river, our battery was retired from this position and placed on the main line of defense northeast of Atlanta, and was soon faced by the enemy again, after the battle of Peachtree Creek, with his entrenchments forming quite an angle in our front, some 800 yards away, but his lines stretched from that angle almost perpendicularly away from us toward his left.
We were told we were going up on an armoured train, which sounded very thrilling, but when we got to the station we only found a quite ordinary carriage put on to the engine to take us up. The Russian battery was at that time at the south of the railway line, the German battery on the north of it and we were in the centre of the sandwich.
Whenever the Russians commenced a battery they laid down first a line of wires to the magazine with which they could blow it up at any time." With this final tribute to the courage of the Russian garrison, Charles Gordon's account of the siege and fall of Sebastopol closes.
The crew of the gun had been annihilated in less than a minute. For a while there was silence. Then the Mexicans, protected by the earthwork that they had thrown up, drew the battery back a hundred yards. Even in the farther batteries the men were very careful about exposing themselves. The Texans, seeing no sure target, held their fire.
Thus we have only some eight miles to guard, and as we have eighteen hundred men, besides the peasants, we ought to be able to do that thoroughly. I expect they will endeavour to make the passage to-night, and they will certainly cross, as nearly as they can, opposite the village. The battery is about a mile below it, and is no doubt intended to cover their landing.
We had landed to storm and blow up a battery, for which purpose we carried with us a bag of powder, and a train of canvas. Everything went on prosperously. We came to a canal which it was necessary to cross, and the best swimmers were selected to convey the powder over without wetting it. I was one of them.
That day the Cat, standing in her place behind the new and temporary breastwork thrown up when the battery was posted, had the felloes of her wheels, which showed above the top of the bank, entirely cut away by Minie-bullets, so that when she jumped in the recoil her wheels smashed and let her down. This covered all old scores.
Early in the morning we had gone out with four companies of the Manchesters in an armoured train with an ordinary train behind it, a battery of Natal Field Artillery, and the Imperial Light Horse under Colonel Scott Chisholme, to reconnoitre with a view to repairing the line.
Lieutenant Kadar simply could not understand why it was that six months before, right away, when young Meltzar announced his entrance into the battery, he had not guessed what they had done to the boy in the hinterland. They had given him a different head.
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