s.' He drew me out a very clear sketch of the lines (which
I have now), and down I went accordingly. He explained every nook
and corner, and took me along outside our most advanced trench,
the bouquets (volleys of small shells fired from mortars) and
other missiles flying about us in, to me, a very unpleasant
manner, he taking the matter remarkably coolly."

The late Sir George Chesney, a very competent and discriminating
witness, gives evidence to the same effect:--

"In his humble position as an Engineer subaltern he attracted the
notice of his superiors, not merely by his energy and activity,
but by a special aptitude for war, developing itself amid the
trench work before Sebastopol in a personal knowledge of the
enemy's movements _such as no other officer attained_. We used to
send him to find out what new move the Russians were making."

The next incident of the siege described by Gordon occurred about a
week after his _bapteme de feu_ in the caves. While the French were
somewhat deliberately making at Inkerman a battery for fifteen guns,
the Russians, partly in a spirit of bravado, threw up in a single
night a battery for nearly twenty guns immediately opposite, at a
distance of not more than 600 yards from the French. As this was made
in the open ground, it was a defiance which could not be tolerated,
and the French accordingly made their arrangements to assault it.
Kinglake has graphically described the surprise of the French when
they discovered this "white circlet or loop on the ground," and the
attempt made by three battalions, with two other battalions in
reserve, to capture it. A battalion of Zouaves, under the command of
Colonel Cere, carried it in fine style, but the Russian reserves came
up in great force, and their own reserves "declining to come to the
scratch," as Gordon laconically put it, the Zouaves were in their turn
compelled to fall back, with a loss of 200 killed. Encouraged by this
success, the Russians gave the French another surprise a few days
later, throwing up a second battery 300 yards further in advance of
the first "white circlet." These two batteries, mounting between them,
according to Kinglake, twenty-two guns, were finally strengthened and
equipped by 10th March, and although the French talked much of
storming them, nothing was done, much to Gordon's disgust. It was
while these operations were in progress that Charles Gordon