Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/332

 302 THE CANNONADE OP CHAP, period divided into ' watclies ; ' and — vvilli the XIIF . L_ sand-glass instead of the clock — they measured and marked lapse of time just as though they were still ou board ship ; so that when, for example, it was noon, they reported it always 'eight bells,' and as soon as they had the due sanc- tion, were ready to ' make it eight.* But, so well had these liussians been taught, that they could not be got to stop short in their old English les- son at the point their Connnanders desired. To the exceeding vexation of Todleben, they could not at all be persuaded to train and point every gun with a separate attention to the object for which he designed it. Knowing well what nation it was that manned the works on Mount liodolph, the men at the Flagstaff and the Central Bastions were too strongly bent on the end, aim, and purpose of what they had learnt from the English, to be able to forego all the rapture of ' giving the to begin with, their rooted faith was that, with no greater pauses of time than were of absolute need for sponging and loading, and firing, one broadside should follow another.* To be serving the guns ; to be swiftly repair- ing the havoc fi-om time to time wrought in the from the neighbourhood of the ' Maison d'cau ' which served as a very good post for observation ; but the three men who witnessed from that jjoint the opening of this great cannonade were disturbed in their appreciation of its grandeur by an iEcideDt strangely incongruous. From the direition of Sebas-
 * Frenchman a broadside.' And, that being done
 * There was a part of the height overlooking Sebastopol