Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/195

 THE APRIL BOMBARDMENT. 163 With all the power yet left them our gunners c ha p. still answered the storm, but their guns of course, !_ after a while, had been wrought by incessant dis- charges to a state of intense, scorching heat, and could only be tired at intervals. Not content with his mighty ascendant in weight of metal the enemy even increased it; and it was on a battery newly opened against him that Oldershaw with his own hands was ' laying ' his No. 3 gun when the voice of Mr De Vine (a devoted, brave, non-commissioned officer, standing up on the top of the parapet) was heard giving warning of ' shell ' ! * Then — delivered by vertical fire — a hollow shot en- tered the embrasure through which Oldershaw was laying his gun, and achieved what perhaps is unique in the annals of gunnery conflicts ; for, killing two, wounding the rest, and yet sparing the Captain himself, it laid the whole of the ' gun ' detachment ' at his feet. The same widely ravaging shot wrenched away the right wheel of the gun, turned its spokes into deadly missiles, and flung off its ' round ' with a force that jammed it deep into the side of the nearest 'traverse.' Twice before, this same gun had been struck by a shot without becoming unserviceable, but it now of course was disabled. So, of the four guns with which Oldershaw had Vine, in a spirit of valiant self-sacrifice, had asked leave to go up, and stand on the top of the parapet.
 * It was for the purpose of giving such warnings that Mr De