Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/197

THK APRIL BOMBARDMENT. 165 himself baffled by the keenness, the skill, the chap. . VI alacrity with which the Eussians exerted their ! vast artillery -power ; for they did not so much as allow him to find out what points had been reached by shots already discharged. Whenever a gun of ours fired, the garrison instantly an- swered it with three or four guns from their side, and by thus piling up banks of smoke put it out of the power of Graham to see where the English shot struck. And, so far as concerned the ' experiment ' of operating against the great Fortress with Older- shaw's four advanced guns, Graham seems to have found himself driven to an early and decisive con- clusion. 'The battle,' he writes, 'was from the ' beginning a hopeless one for us. . . . No. ' VII. made a gallant fight, but in a short time ' three out of the four guns were disabled, and ' half the gun detachments killed or wounded.' Then Graham goes on to say simply, and as though it were merely a law of any man's nature to go where conditions are desperate : — ' About ' this time seeing how our fire had slackened, I ' visited the battery.' It would have been interesting to hear an ac- count of any conference passing at such a moment, and between two such men as Captain Oldershaw and Lieutenant Graham, but the enemy granted no time. By the blow of a round-shot, or rather by blows from the substances and the mass of stone which the round-shot — after striking a sand- bag — sent driving against his breast, Graham was