Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/65

 MINING AND COUNTERMINING. 33 dained war against the Malakoff was, after all, chap. war against the masterful key of the position, with therefore a tendency — an ever-increasing tendency — to draw to itself more and more of the energies that could be roused on each side by a conflict charged with great issues; and besides, it so happened that on the very morrow of the day when they issued that paper of In- structions our allies encountered a blow which destroyed some long-cherished hopes, and mate- rially weakened their prospect of ever breaking through the Town front. VIII. It was on the 20th of November that the The French mining French had begun to push forward their great operations. mining enterprise, and they had thenceforth conducted it with unwearied energy, their first design being to surprise the enemy by effecting an explosion under his Flagstaff Bastion. Unen- lightened, it seems, by either spies or deserters, or by even those inferences which might fairly have been drawn from known facts, they worked their way somewhat unguardedly, moving earth- trucks backwards and forwards without duly niurlling their sounds, and besides often talking aloud, as though — because twenty feet deep in the bowels of the earth — they needs must be out of the earshot of any listening enemy. Yet the foe whom they had challenged by entering on this underground warfare was per- VOL. VIII. c