of sly humour which mocked the royal ear, 'Yes, your Majesty, he swore himself in yesterday.'

Now, Pennefather's senses were stirred, and his fighting temper delighted, by the obstinacy with which his pickets on the lower slopes of the ravines held their ground against the Russian advance. Kinglake says he was 'enchanted' with the tenacity of their resistance. The sound of the exploding muskets coming up through the fog drew him on as with a magic spell. He would 'feed’his pickets; he would make the Russian fight for every foot of ground he gained ; so he commenced to push forward in succession, company after company, wing after wing. The mist, the brushwood, the huge rocks which pierced the sloping hillside, broke these up into yet tipier fragments under independent leaders.

The men and officers, it must be admitted, enjoyed this method of fighting. It gave play to personal courage and to individual qualities of leadership. The starch of discipline melted in the heat of such a struggle; the natural fighting man emerged. But in this piecemeal fashion nearly Pennefather's whole command was by-and-by fighting in fragments at the outposts, and beyond the control of any single commanding brain or will. And the fortunes of these clusters of unrelated fighting men, all in the highest mood of battle, were sometimes very extraordinary.

Soimonoff was so tormented by the fire of the obstinate British pickets that he determined to move without waiting for the arrival of Pauloff's forces, and a mass of 9,000 men moved down the slope of Shell Hill and across the valley towards the centre and left flank of the British position. The extreme left was held by a wing of the 49th, under Major Grant, and through the mist the British could hear the multitudinous hum of thousands of voices, the massive and regulated tread of thousands of feet, as the enemy came on. The moving acres of flat-capped Russian heads now became visible, and Grant's four companies245 men facing 9,000—fell slowly back, firing as they went fiercely. At the same moment 6,000 men of Pauloff's command came into action on the English right. Some of their battalions,

. spreading out to their own right, stumbled across the Sandbag Battery, held at that moment by six men under a sergeant, and with a rush seized it. Here were 15,000 men attacking the British front at either extremity, while the great batteries from Shell Hill thundered on its centre.

Some five companies of the Connaught Rangers, with Town

send's battery of six guns, had by this time found their way up from the Light Division, and stumbled full upon the advancing Russian battalions on the left. The British gunners delivered one hasty shot when the Russians were within ten yards of the guns, and were then submerged. Miller, in command of the battery, bade his gunners draw swords and charge, and himself rode straight into the Russian ranks, while the artillerymen, in a tempest of rage, fought with swords and rammers, and even with naked fists, for their guns. It was an heroic, but vain struggle. Three of the guns were captured, and the Russian column mored steadily on.

They were next struck by four companies of the 77th, under Colonel Egerton. This particular Russian column, indeed, winding like some gigantic and many-jointed reptile up the Careenage ravine, had passed the point occupied by the 77th; its head was debouching on the plateau. A lieutenant named Clifford stood at the extreme left of the 77th; he shouted to the men nearest him, • Come on, boys, and charge with me!' and flung himself upon the flank of the great Russian column. Scarcely more than fifty men heard his cry or grasped his meaning, but these instantly followed, and this gallant rush actually broke through, and, so to speak, fractured the spine of the long Russian column. The files at its head, actually within sight of the tents of the Second Division, hearing the tumult of the fight behind them, believed themselves cut off, and came tumbling back in panic. A picket of Grenadier Guards, on a post on the shoulder of the hill overlooking the Careenage Ravine, had by this time discovered the huge gliding column of the enemy beneath, and opened fire upon it, with the effect that the column halted, seemed to sway to and fro, and then fell back. The fire of a picket, and the sudden dash upon its flank of less than fifty men, that is, actually thrust back Soimonoff's whole right column at the very moment when it seemed at the point of success!

Soimonoff himself, however, was personally leading his second, or left, column-nearly 8,000 strong-up the slopes of Saddletop Ridge on the British front, Grant's four companies doggedly trying to bridle its advance.

Colonel Egerton, with his four companies of the 77th, still advancing found himself on the flank of the great mass, and, without pause, he fired a volley and charged. The great Russian mass, as Kinglake describes the scene, heard the British words of command, saw the long line

of British muskets fall suddenly to the level and break into flame, then the bristling edge of bayonets moved swiftly towards them. They saw here and there, moving in dimness, the shadowy form of a rider, the naked gleam of a sword, and to the Russian imagination the two or three company officers who happened to be mounted, became the leaders of a cavalry charge, terrible as that which, only ten days before, had ridden up the Valley of Death! The long stretch of grey-coated battalions seemed to quiver and shrink, and before the line of moving steel points smote it, it broke, and the men of the 77th tumbled through the disordered mass, and pushed it, with shouts, and oaths, and shocks of angry steel, down the hillside. Many Russians flung themselves down on the ground till the slender British line swept over them, then they rose and followed their retreating comrades, and these grew so numerous that the 77th, an irregular line not 300 strong, had a mass of 'resurrection boys '-as, with grim humour, they were called-behind them treble themselves in number. The British, however, treated them with grim goodhumour, as beaten men, and allowed them to run past their flank without harm and join the main body. General Soimonoff him- . self perished in that fierce charge of the 77th.

Further east, part of General Pauloff's force, 6,000 strong, was advancing, and two Borodino battalions, in particular, were moving along the post-road, crossed, half-way down the ravine, by a rough stone wall called “The Barrier.' This point of the British line was held by 200 men of the 30th, under Colonel Mauleverer. The 30th tried to open fire on the Russian advance, but their pieces were damp, and the exasperated men found themselves practically without the power to fire a shot. Mauleverer, a cool and daring soldier, took his men forward at the double to 'The Barrier,' and made them lie down behind it. He waited till the multitudinous tread of the Russians showed they were within a yard or two of the other side of the Barrier, then, with a shout, he himself and a couple of officers sprang upon the summit of the wall, and leaped down almost upon the Russian bayonets. How the 30th followed their officers may be imagined ! The astonished Russians beheld a sudden swarm of British tumbling over the wall and running upon them with levelled bayonets. The officers who leaped over the wall first were shot or stabbed, but the men of the 30th were by this time tearing their way through the yielding mass of the Russians, and here was seen

the amazing spectacle of the slender line of the 30th, not 200 strong, driving a broken mass of Russians ten times their own number across the Quarry Ravine and up the slopes of Shell Hill ! The 41st, under General Adams, by a like brilliant charge, drove off the section of Russians holding the Sandbag Battery.

It was not yet half-past seven o'clock, and yet the first assault of the Russians had been defeated, and defeated, too, with much slaughter. The Russians had attacked with 25,000 men and 38 guns, and of this number 15,000 had been thrust forward into actual and desperate conflict with the British, who, up to this stage, had less than 4,000 men in their fighting line. But the individual courage displayed on the part of the British, the close and deadly quality of their fire, and the resolute daring with which clusters of men numbering a few score threw themselves, again and again, on massed battalions to be counted by the thousand, had given a tiny few the victory over the many.

Soimonoff's attack was delivered simultaneously on the British front and left; General Dannenberg, who now took the command, attacked almost at the same moment the British right, at the Sandbag Battery, and its centre, and the story of each attack makes a marvellous tale. The Russian general had 19,000 troops supported by 90 guns; Pennefather, to resist this force, had in hand scarcely 1,400 men, with some 18 guns; but 1,200 men of the Guards, and 2,000 under Cathcart, from the Fourth Division, were rapidly coming up to the line of battle.

The Guards moved to the extreme British right; where Adams at the Sandbag Battery, with 700 men, principally of the 41st and 49th, was trying to bar the march of 10,000 fresh troops. The fighting at this point was desperate, and often hand to hand. In the tangle of the brushwood, and the bewilderment of the fog, it was impossible to keep regular formation, and the British line really consisted of irregular and swaying clusters of desperately fighting men. One instance tells the mood into which men were kindled. Four officers of the 41st—all of them young, one of them desperately wounded-challenged each other by name, ran in on their own account upon the Russian mass, and all died desperately fighting. Adams himself, who commanded at this part of the line, fell mortally wounded, and just at this stage the Grenadier Guards and the Scots Fusiliers, 700 strong, came into the fight, marching straight upon the huge Russian mass over 7,000 strong in front of them,

a

When within a few yards of the enemy the Grenadiers fung forward their muskets and tried to fire, but only a snapping of caps followed. The rifles were damp, and from the long line of bearskins rolled up a curious growl of wrath. The bayonet remained, however, and the men went forward at a run, smashed in upon

the Russian front, and flung it, broken and disordered, over the crest of the ravine, the Scots Fusiliers on the left of the Grenadiers performing a similar feat on the masses opposed to them. Again and again the Russian battalions, rallied by their officers, re-formed under the shelter of the ridge, and came over its crest, always to be hurled back again by the Guards, who, however, steadily dwindled in numbers, and whose cartridges had begun to fail. Some of the men, in default of better missiles, actually picked up the loose stones lying underneath their feet, and hurled them at the Russians. At this critical moment, through the smoke another line of bearskins could be seen advancing—it was the Coldstreams, whose fire soon swelled the thunder and tumult of the fight.

The Russians ignite slowly, but by this time they were kindled to a flame of valour. They came on, repeatedly, with the utmost resolution, a cluster of officers with swords gleaming high in air leading them. One Russian officer, little more than a lad, clambered, with a single private at his side, to the summit of the Sandbag Battery, and actually leaped down upon the British Guardsmen who held it!

But fierce as was the oft-repeated advance of the Russian battalions, the tough and knotted line of British soldiers never broke. The trouble was to keep the men, after they had flung the broken Russians over the crest, from following them down the ravine. The ardour of the attack and the pursuit threatened to carry them completely away. At last, indeed, the restraining power of the officers failed, and after one particularly stubborn assault, and specially fiery repulse, of a Russian column, a cluster of the Coldstreams, in one hot rush, went with the broken enemy down the slope. At that moment, Cathcart, with some 400 men of the 68th and 46th, came up. It was intended that he should fill the gap on the edge of the plateau betwixt the Sandbag Battery and the Barrier on the post-road; but Cathcart thought he saw the opportunity of following the pursuing Coldstreams down the slope, and striking the yet unbroken Russian battalions on the flank. This was a fatal movement! It was a movement, for one