heir dreadful business,
except during one week, when, from one of the lower slopes of the
Balkans, I could see the whole horizon red with the flame of burning
villages, and could sometimes even hear the shrieks of outraged women.

But in all this time I never heard a shot fired, so far as I can
remember, until I came to the Schipka, where a long-drawn artillery
duel was dragging on in the pass between the guns of Sulie-man Pasha and
General Gourko. Correspondents and doctors lived at that time, for the
most part, at a respectful distance from the scene of that monotonous
action. We were quartered at Schipka Keui, where we pitched our tents on
the edge of a forest of wild plum trees, and spent our idle time as best
we could, whilst we waited for developments. Amongst us was the English
volunteer on the Turkish side, mentioned in the last chapter, who bore
the rank of Colonel, and remembered by his old comrades as Schipka
Campbell. He was a man of the most extraordinary and daring valour, and
I really believe that he found a keen joy in danger. He was full of a
scheme for a night attack upon a position which Gourko had taken up in
a height which the Russians called St Nicholas Crag, and he got leave,
after a good deal of characteristic procrastination, to go into the
forts, and thence to take a sketch of the country he desired to travel
in the night-time. I was very eager to see things closer at hand than
I had been able to do till then, and it was arranged that I should
accompany Campbell on this sketching expedition. By the side of the
winding mountain way a sort of covering wall had been built for some
hundreds of yards, to shelter passing troops and convoys from the
observation of the enemy. It was a rather flimsy structure, and it could
have been beaten down by a single gun in an hour or two; but I suppose
that the rocks which commanded it from the other side of the pass were
inaccessible to artillery. In one place the ground dipped, and formed
a cup-like hollow, and, the big guns having brought down a good deal of
rain by their constant firing, a pond had gathered here, and had sapped
the foundations of the wall. There was left a clear space of rather
more than a dozen yards, and this place was thickly strewn with splashed
bullets which had struck the face of the overhanging rock. There was
probably a good cartload of spoiled lead strewn there, and the dark face
of the rock was pitted all over with grey bullet-marks.