The extreme contrasts of light and shade in this sketch wiU not fail to strike the reader, as well as the pecuhar effect of the bold forms of the rock blending insensibly with the work of man, and thrown out and relieved against the deep blue of the sky beyond.
A HOT DAY IN THE BATTERIES.
This view gives a vivid idea of the interior of a Battery during one of the active periods of the bombardment.
It is a scene of bustle and excitement, strongly contrasting with the quiet days of which we have already had an illustration. The Battery teems with life and energy. On every side men and officers are seen busily employed in laying, loading, and firing the stupendous guns with which the work is armed. Vast clouds of thick white smoke, issuing from their muzzles, announce in rapid succession the departure of some swift-winged messenger of death. Answering puffs start from the whole line of the enemy's defences from right to left.
Shells are bursting in every direction, and the tremendous contest is urged with equal ardour and determination on either side. The wind blows the smoke away from the town, and Sebastopol, with its magnificent public buildings, its proud forts, its placid harbour, and its numerous fleet, is distinctly visible as the sulphureous cloud roUs sullenly away to leeward. The view is taken from the left of the Twentyone Gun Battery, just at the entrance to it from the Woronzoff Road, which runs at the bottom of the hoUow on the left.
In the foreground are one 13-inch and two 10-inch mortars, and to their right the siege-train guns, and those of the Naval Brigade, In front of the battery extends our second parallel, and in the hollow beyond is a third or fourth line of trenches. The reader wiU easily recognise the Redan in the great mass of batteries and embrasures towards the centre, nor will he have forgotten the appearance of the
Barrack Battery on his left, or the Malakoff on the right. The barracks. Forts Saint Paul and Saint Nicholas, and the other great buildings of the town, have been so frequently pointed out, that any fresh indication of their relative positions would be superfluous. The bit of water visible at the end of the Woronzoff Road is the head of the Dockyard Creek.
This vivid portrayal of the appearance of a battery at night, during one of the severe bombardments, is taken from a portion of the Greenhill Battery, or left attack.
The gun in the foreground, which is being charged, is No. 7 gun; No. 6 is the next, which the captain of the gun is in the act of laying; No. 5 is the siege-train gun, which has just been discharged. Next to this is a little hut constructed against the traverse by the men to shelter themselves from the weather during the " quiet " days or nights, as they may happen to be.
In the battery on the right are a Sapper, and some men carrying sand-bags and gabions to repair any injuries which may have been done to the embrasures.
Such are the main objects in the sketch; the occupations of the actors are much the same as on a " hot day;" the scene of their labours is identical, but night adds a wild fantastic horror to a spectacle which, even under the broad eye of day, is grand with the terrible majesty of destruction. At each discharge of the guns, sheets of the most vivid flame shoot forth with inconceivable rapidity, illuminating with their fierce and lurid light the weather-beaten forms and excited countenances of the men, penetrating into every nook and corner of the battery, and revealing with startling distinctness every accident of the ground, every detail of the colossal engines to which the red glow owes its birth. Miles away to the rear, like summer lightning, are seen the continuous flashes, brightening the sky from the horizon to the zenith, and accompanied by volumes of sound which echo from the hills, fill the air, and make the earth tremble. Shells traverse the heavens in all directions, rising with a gradual and protracted flight till their twinkling fuse seems lost among the very stars, whence they descend with unerring
.
aim and ever-increasing momentum to the devoted spot wliich they are to shatter and destroy. And now a pale pinky glow diffuses itself over the lower regions of the atmosphere, and, emerging from the centre of its soft nebulous light, rocket after rocket, from the French batteries on the left, hiss like fiery serpents through the air, darting forked tongues of flame into the heart of the distracted city; ere long a shed or a storehouse is ignited in the town, and as the fire, nourished by a redoubled shower of missiles from the batteries all along the line, spreads and intensifies, the lingering spectator by the Victoria Redoubt, or on Cathcart's HiU, gazes on a scene whose brilliancy and beauty make him half unmindful of the dread meaning of sorrow and of death with which it is pregnant.