THE SHIPKA PASS. 
533 
and we began to prepare the cheeks of the embrasures for revetment, 
and place Sat stones below the trails for the whole length of the recoil. 
Darkness coming on at 8 p.m. would protect the execution of the works, 
and at that time the sappers would arrive with the materials which they 
had got ready in their bivouac behind the <e Round Battery " in the 
course of the day. 
Till darkness set in we had lots of spare time. After such excite¬ 
ment it was impossible to sleep, and we began to talk of the Turks, of 
Mount St. Nicholas, of the killed and wounded. Some one had got 
hold of the “ Journal of the Fatherland/' and was reading it aloud. 
Mens feelings were aroused, and involuntarily they crowded round 
him ; in our tent it was suffocating, and therefore we all got out of it> 
and lay down by the entrance. Every minute the bullets whistled over 
our heads, singing in different keys. From time to time the sharp 
crack of the Berdan, No. 1, was heard behind our tents from the trenches 
of the rifles. Soon some of the rifle officers came to have a chat with 
us about the shooting. They assured us that the men rarely answered 
the Turkish fire as they had orders to spare their cartridges. They 
described to us how the firing was carried on. Each group (six men) 
chose from themselves one man, whose duty it was to look out and fire 
at the enemy when one shewed himself. This, however, the Turks 
seldom did, and all that one man could do was to aim at the clouds of 
smoke. The rifle was therefore loaded and laid on the parapet; the 
riflemen remained ready to fire, keeping his eye on the enemy's trenches, 
and whenever he saw a puff of smoke, at once fired. Sometimes they 
tried another way, they let the enemy fire two or three times without 
answering, to induce him to shew himself, and at the fourth shot fired 
at once. The Turks, however, soon understood all these dodges, and 
began to change their places after every shot, and this they did so 
cleverly, that our men saw it was of no use to fire at the smoke, and so 
answered the shots very rarely. Sometimes a group of our men 
would all fire at once, but they were invariably answered by a salvo 
which generally reduced their numbers a little. They therefore 
deepened the cutting in which their rifles were placed so that 
their heads might be protected, and fired as through embrasures. 
At this time the covering party of our battery was found by two 
companies of the 15th Rifle Battalion. They were placed to the 
front and flank of the battery, and had orders to sweep with their fire 
the valley between Mount St. Nicholas and the hill on which stood 
“ Devyatiglazka." Thus placed, they swept the approaches to the 
battery and the dead angle in front of it, not touched by our own fire. 
While we were chatting with the rifle officers, the commander 
wrote a report on the day's firing. It ran as follows —“ To day, the 
20th, Battery No. 1 fired at the Turkish nine-gun battery, and by two 
well placed shots destroyed two of its embrasures. There were no 
losses in men in the 1st battery, or in the f Steel Battery,' but the 
division of the 2nd battery lost one sergeant killed. There were no 
losses in materiel in the 1st or f Steel Batteries,' in the division of the 
2nd battery, an elevating screw was damaged. 66 common shell, or 
11 per gun were fired by the 1st battery. The f Steel Battery ' was 
66 
