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The bridge had been mined early in the morning, and his opinion was that the sight of the horsemen converging from many sides in the pursuit of his person alarmed the officer in command of the sappers and caused the premature firing of the charges. He had not gone more than two hundred yards on the other side when he heard the sound of the fatal explosions. Mr.
The eastward faces of the towers rise above an inclined basement, which slopes to a height of from fifteen to sixteen feet from the ground. This answered two purposes. It increased the strength of the wall at the part exposed to sappers; it also caused the rebound of projectiles thrown from above, and so helped to keep assailants at a distance.
Yet I knew that all over that great valley the earth was crawling with life and full of immense and sinister secrecies the galleries of the sappers, the trenches and redoubts, the hiding-places of great guns, the concealed observations of the watchers. Yes, it was just such a scene as this. The only difference was that you had not to put your ear to the ground to catch the thunder of the guns.
Captain Broadfoot and his sappers turned fiercely round more than once, and inflicted vengeance for this treachery; and Colonel Dennie, in the end, dexterously decoyed the enemy away from their walls into the open plain, and then the cavalry, under Captain Oldfield and Lieutenant Mayne, charging among them with headlong valour, strewed the ground with 150 slain.
Eble and Larrey were the two men whom the whole army never ceased to respect and to obey, even when they demanded things which were almost impossible. General Eble then with his 400 men departed in the evening of November 24th. for Borisow, followed by the clever General Chasseloup who had some sappers with him, but without their tools.
Here men are posted, while all work is for a time stopped, to listen for the first sounds of the enemy's sappers the thud-thud of the picks or the "cough" of the man whose lungs seek this relief in the stuffy air of the cramped tunnel. If the enemy is not found, progress is continued forward from both ends of the cross-gallery and the game goes merrily on.
The two hundred sappers and miners came next, and Don Gabriel Peralta, with his Spanish company; brought up the rear. It was a wild night. Incessant lightning, alternately revealed and obscured the progress of the midnight march through the black waters, as the anxious Commander watched the expedition from the shore, but the soldiers were quickly swallowed up in the gloom.
As the main and flanking parties swept up to the redoubt, the sappers and miners, who formed the first rank, attacked the abattis with their axes; but the troops, mad with long waiting and fretted by the galling fire of the foe, would not wait, and, pushing them aside, clambering, boosting, and tumbling went over the obstruction.
But the British losses had been severe. BRITISH OFFICERS. Killed Hon. Lieutenant L. Manley, Commissariat Department. Wounded dangerously Major W.W. Taylor, 45th Sikhs. Wounded severely Lieut.-Colonel J. Lamb, 24th P.I. " " Major L. Herbert, D.A.A.G. " " Captain H.F. Holland, 24th P.I. " " Lieutenant F.W. Watling, Q.O. Sappers and Miners.
A few sappers and a waggon with the advance guard would ensure a clean supply for everyone, since water that is quite insufficient in a dam can be made to go a long way when it is pumped into watering troughs; and a section of engineers can fix up the whole necessary apparatus in ten minutes.
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