clock next day, the firing went on. At four o'clock on the second
day the English and their allies began to fire from new batteries. A
thousand guns kept up a steady, terrible fire of shells, and, protected
by the fire, the French dashed forward and seized one of the Russians'
most important positions. Attacking and being driven back, attacking
again and gaining some ground, once more attacking and losing what they
had gained, leaving men lying dead and dying where the fight had been
fiercest, so the weary days and nights dragged past.

"Charlie is all right," his brother wrote home, "and has escaped amidst
a terrific shower of grape and shells of every description. . . . He
is now fast asleep in his tent, having been in the trenches from two
o'clock yesterday morning during the cannonade until seven last night,
and again from 12-30 this morning until noon."

Both sides agreed to stop fighting for a few days after this, in order
to bury the dead.

The whole ground before Sebastopol was, Gordon wrote, "one great
graveyard of men, freshly made mounds of dark earth covering English,
French, and Russians."

From this time until September the war dragged on. It was a dull and
dreary time, and as September drew near Gordon thought of happy days in
England, with the scent of autumn leaves, and the whir of a covey of
birds rising from the stubble, and he longed for partridge-shooting.
But they shot men, not birds, in the Crimea. "The Russians are brave,"
he wrote, "certainly inferior to none; their work is stupendous, their
shell practice is beautiful." Gordon was never one to grudge praise to
his enemies.

Every day men died of disease, or were killed or wounded. On 31st
August 1855, Gordon wrote that "Captain Wolseley (90th Regiment), an
assistant engineer, has been wounded by a stone." In spite of stones
and shells, Captain Wolseley fought many brave fights, and years
afterwards became Lord Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of the British
Army, a gallant soldier and a brilliant leader of men.

On 8th September one of the chief holds of the Russians was stormed by
the French, who took it after a fierce fight and hoisted on it their
flag. This was the signal for the English to attack the great fort of
the Redan. With a rush they got to the ditch between them and the
fortress, put up their ladders, and entered it. For half-an-hour they
held it nobly. Then enormous numbers of fresh Russian troops came to
the attac