Along the whole line of the Sevastopol bastions, which for so many months had been seething with such amazingly energetic life, for so many months had seen heroes relieved by death as they fell one after another, and for so many months had aroused the fear, the hatred, and at last the admiration of the enemy⁠—on these bastions no one was now to be seen. All was dead, ghastly, terrible, but not silent: the destruction still went on. Everywhere on the earth, blasted and strewn around by fresh explosions, lay shattered gun-carriages, crushing the corpses of foes and Russians alike; cast-iron cannons, silenced forever, thrown with terrific force into holes and half-buried in the earth; bombs, cannonballs and more dead bodies, then holes and splintered beams from the bombproofs, and again silent corpses in grey and blue uniforms. All this still shuddered again and again, and was lit up by the lurid flames of the explosions that continued to shake the air.