530 
THE SHIPKA PASS. 
at 8 a.m. the cannonade opened from almost all the batteries except the 
“ Devyatiglazka.” We were soon all in our places and received orders 
from the commander of the battery to commence firing slowly from the 
right. The practice against “ Devyatiglazka” was conducted with an 
elevation of 36 lines, and the guns were laid on the two central 
embrasures, which were the most visible. It is impossible to say that 
the first results were satisfactory. The Nos. 1 lost their presence of 
mind and began to diminish the elevation sometimes by as much as 
two lines, frequently forgetting to give the necessary tabular deflection; 
and this loss of coolness increased in a rapidly ascending scale so as 
to seriously interfere with the laying. In one of the guns of the 4th 
division the laying took a particularly long time. In the first place 
the gun was not level, and then the line of fire was not perpendicular 
to the parapet, so it had to be got into position by handspikes. Then 
the flurried state of the loading number retarded the work; when at 
the handspike he was constantly throwing the trail too much to the 
right or left, and so the laying was lengthened out, and the No. Ns eye 
got tired. This went on till another number, a cooler hand, volunteered 
to take his place. Our first shot was from the right gun where the 
commander of the battery had taken up his position. The curiosity 
of all was so strong that the whole detachment rushed to the em¬ 
brasure to see where the shell burst and some even jumped on the 
parapet. This shell fell short and did no damage, although the look-out 
men said it was well placed. The crowd of observers was however 
soon scattered by a few dozen rifle balls which the watchful Turkish 
sharpshooters let fly at us from a flank lodgment, of which one knocked 
off the cap of a look-out man, who shewed himself more than was 
necessary. 
After the second round from the battery, “ Devyatiglazka” fired a 
salvo at us which effectually stopped the men from running to see the 
effect of our shells. All the enemy^s shells burst in the parados , two 
sagenes behind our guns. The men ran from their guns and crowded 
against the lateral traverses. But an answer was soon given to this 
salvo from the “ steel battery,” then from our 5th gun, and after that 
all went on as usual. Seeing that the enemy^s shells were not so 
dangerous as they were said to be, the men soon cooled down and stood 
steadily to their guns, the loading was carried out more carefully, and 
the laying more quickly. The only thing that bothered us was the 
recoil. Although a traverse ran along behind the gun to check the 
recoil, this latter was still very great, and although we scotched up 
the wheels with handspikes, the shock often damaged the traverse 
seriously; we had also to remove the trail handspike. 
The running-up of the guns was done even quicker than at drill; 
the men knew that if a shell fell in the embrasure at the moment of 
running-up, the detachment would suffer severely, therefore they ran 
up the gun as quickly as possible, and took shelter behind traverses, or 
the main parapet, till the order to load was given actually. After our 
third round, two shells struck the embrasure, considerably damaged its 
right cheek, and covered us all with mud and stones, but the splinters 
lodged in the parapet and caused no loss. At the bursting of these 
