Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/455

 THE 17TII OF OCTOBER. 425 They mounted the parapets, and toiled at the re- chap. pairs of the embrasures with their own hands. '__ But even by all these efforts the English artil- lery was not to be prevented from overmastering the Eedan ; * and soon after three o'clock in the afternoon there occurred a disaster which com- pleted the ruin of the work, A shell blew up great explosion ; the powder-magazine established in the salient. When the smoke lifted, it disclosed a dire spec- its effect tacle of ruin. What a man could see of the world where transformed by the explosion, bore scarce any likeness to what he had been look- ing upon a minute before. At the fore part of the work the parapet had been heaved over into the ditch, and so filled it in. The ground was laden with fragments of platforms, with guns dismounted, with gun-carriages overthrown and shattered. On all sides there were the blackened bodies of men scathed by fire, and it was after- wards known that more than 100 men had been thus killed. There were many of the dead — and among them the brave Captain Leslie — whose bodies could never be recognised. The calmest of the survivors who gazed on this scene of havoc might well enough judge that the last hour of their cherished Sebastopol must indeed be come ; for not only could they see that the ruthless energy of their own war-munitions had laid open the road for a conqueror, but also, through the roar of the artillery, they heard the ' hurrah ' of ' aitillery from getting the dominion of ours.' — TodluLeu.
 * ' These effoit.s were important to prevent the English