There were two steep ridges to the
west of the city, crowned by strong stone breastworks and held by
considerable detachments of regulars, being positions of supreme
importance, as they commanded the redoubts on that side from a
distance of 300 to 500 yards. The Prince gave the assault of one to
a battalion of Montenegrins, and the other to the Herzegovinian
auxiliaries.
There was in our camp a young German officer who had been under a
shadow, and had been sent away to retrieve his reputation for courage.
He came to Montenegro to earn a decoration, and begged the Prince to
let him go with the Montenegrin battalion. At the foot of each ridge
was an outwork which had first to be taken by assault, from across the
open, and which was taken in the early twilight, the Turks seeking
refuge in the redoubt above. The Montenegrin force reversed the works
they had taken, and a desultory rifle fire went on till it was too
dark to see the sights of the rifles. We, the spectators, were
assigned posts to see the spectacle as at the theatre, and went to
them just after sundown. The straggling fire of the early twilight
stopped, and there was an unbroken silence and immobility which lasted
perhaps twenty minutes, and until everything had become vague and
indefinable in the deepening twilight, when we heard the signal, given
by a trumpet call, and instantly the steep sides of the two ridges
were crawling with gray shadows, and a terrific fire burst out from
the redoubts at the top, lasting for hardly ten minutes, when it
as suddenly ceased; and then, after a brief pause, the Montenegrin
trumpet sounded from the summit of their ridge to tell that the work
was done.
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