Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/97

THE COUNTER-APPROACHES. 65 The white circlet or loop had been made in the chap. night-time by workmen whose diggings laid bare ! — an extended, re-entering strip of the natural lime- stone rock ; and of course the new object im- ported some fresh creation of earth-works ; but why a garrison busied in defending Sebastopol should come out far from their lines to fasten with pickaxe and spade on a part of Mount Inker- man, few or none at first seemed to divine. Yet the new apparition sprang out of a piece of Todieben-s inf6r6Dccs sound knowledge which by acts — not unseen from from what the Allies afar — the Allies had themselves disclosed to their had "been visibly watchful, sagacious adversary. doing. To seam the hills with fresh earth- work on the sites we saw chosen for the ' King ' and the 'Artilleur' batteries, and to do this under the field-glass of the enemy's keen engineer, was to tell him as though in plain speech of the great change of counsel to which the besiegers had come ; for, although the two specks he descried were on different ridges, and parted the one from the other by a distance of more than a mile, he perceived them to import works designed for the same immediate purpose — works, both of them, fashioned for guns which would cross their fires on the Mamelon, and the interposed neck of ground that divided it from the Malakoff front. Inferring thence that the Mamelon must be the proximate object of attack, and one plainly craved as a stepping-stone from which to spring at the Malakoff, he cpiickly went on to convince himself that the more early measures to be taken VOL. VIII. E