THE SHIPKA PASS. 
531 
shells such a smell of sulphur arose that the men of No. 5 gun all 
began to cough as if they had smelt something poisonous. The enemy 
continued to fire salvoes but did us little or no harm. Many of his 
shells, missing the parapet, lodged in the parados , and did not burst, 
and others burst in the air, sending their splinters to our rear. Some 
damage was, however, done to the parapet and embrasures. 
We went on firing slowly, except when the enemy's fire slackened, 
when we fired salvoes by divisions ; by one fired by the 4th Division, 
two embrasures, the centre one, and the one from the right of 
“ Devyatiglazka" were much damaged. Towards the end of the firing 
our men became so cool that they made jokes and criticisms on our 
own and the enemy's shells. 
At about 11 o'clock the firing ceased all along the line, except that 
of the small arms, which kept up a lively rattle, broken at rare intervals 
by the boom of a heavy gun. To the whistling of the bullets we paid 
hardly any attention ; many did not even hear them, so deafened were 
they by the previous artillery duel, and we had to shout at one another 
to be heard at all. As the enemy had evidently no wish to prolong the 
firing, the order was given to load all the guns with common shell 
and lay them on the third embrasure from the left of “ Devyatiglazka." 
The men lay down and we went into our tents. Soon the order was 
given to unload, sponge and wash out the guns, and load and lay 
again ; and while the men rested and boiled their tea we also refreshed 
ourselves, and discussed the results of the firing of the day and the 
means of strengthening the battery. If all the counsels, opinions, 
and advice then given had been acted upon, our firing would, of course, 
been irreproachable, and we should have knocked “ Dvygatiglazka " into 
a “ cocked hat ! " However, it was not the first time a battery had not 
made splendid practice, but now that the firing was over we all forgot 
how far we were from being able to call ourselves good shots. Above 
all, we agreed that it was necessary to increase the height of the parapet 
on the flank on which it was exposed to the enfilade fire from the Turkish 
lodgments, as the bullets from them, flying over the parapet, fell into 
the battery, and although, as yet, they had caused us no loss, they dis» 
composed the men. Besides, an embrasure existed in this parapet 
which we had not armed and did not require, and through which 
the Turkish skirmishers constantly fired. This we thought advisable 
to build up, but the commander of the battery decided that for the 
present it should be only blinded, so that in case of need w r e might fire 
from it on the hostile lodgments. 
During the action we had observed that the embrasures were getting 
damaged by our own firing. This arose from their exterior and interior 
dimensions being smaller than usual, and they had been so constructed 
to present a smaller aim to the enemy's projectiles. At first the object 
had been at right angles to the line of fire passing through the axis of 
the embrasure, but these lines of fire w 7 ere not perpendicular to 
“ Devyatiglazka," but to the lodgments which had been built low 7 er 
down, and the actual line of fire therefore made an acute angle with 
that for which the embrasure had been constructed. This, of course, 
caused one cheek of the embrasure to be much more affected by the 
