The French trenches, by which they approached and invested the Malakoff were carried so close under its sloping sides that one might have stood by the Russian guns and tossed a stone into them.

Repeatedly, during three terrible days, they swarmed up the little Malakoff hill, and were beaten back with terrible slaughter.
Finally, they captured the place, and drove the Russians out, who then tried to retreat into the town, but the English had taken the Redan, and shut them off with a wall of flame; there was nothing for them to do but go back and retake the Malakoff or die under its guns.

They did go back; they took the Malakoff and retook it two or three times, but their desperate valor could not avail, and they had to give up at last.
These fearful fields, where such tempests of death used to rage, are peaceful enough now; no sound is heard, hardly a living thing moves about them, they are lonely and silent--their desolation is complete.
There was nothing else to do, and so every body went to hunting relics.
They have stocked the ship with them.

They brought them from the Malakoff, from the Redan, Inkerman, Balaklava--every where.

They have brought cannon balls, broken ramrods, fragments of shell--iron enough to freight a sloop.