great cloud of smoke rolling from these batteries was turned towards Sebastopol and seemed to envelop the entire city. Notwithstanding the veil which was thrown over the place, the cannonade continued with great fury. After a time there was a slight lull, but it broke out again almost immediately. Sometimes all these long lines of artillery seemed to be discharged almost simultaneously, then only a few guns at a time, then a few moments of silence, then another burst, and so on like the cadences of the movements of the waves of the ocean on a sandy beach. Watching with our glasses, we could see walls of stone go down as if they were made of sawdust. Clouds of dust rose every moment from the front of the earthworks. The Russian cannon were dismounted, and we could see everywhere along the lines that the French fire was telling with terrific effect.
The Russians were compelled to keep to their bomb proofs, so that scarcely a man was visible along their entire line. For a little while it seemed as if the French would be able to sweep away the whole place without encountering any resistance, but after a time the Russian gunners began to reply; but they fired very slowly, taking accurate aim, as though ammunition was scarce and they did not intend to waste a single shot. The fire of the Russians seemed to stimulate the French rather than to discourage them, as their volleys were given faster than before the Russian fire commenced. Some of their guns were aimed at the line of Russian defences and others directly at the city. Meantime the English naval brigade and siege train were working away at the face of the Redan and the Malakoff in the same quiet manner in which they had been working for days. They gave material aid to the French by keeping up a steady fire of shells on the batteries between the Redan and the Dockyard Creek. Occasionally the mortars in the rest of the English batteries threw their ten- and thirteen-inch shells behind the Russian lines and accompanied these shells with shot from the heavy siege guns.
The French batteries were far superior in the number of their guns to the English, as the following table taken on the 5th of the month will show:
