‘You have still your bayonets, boys,’ he replied; and with these they fought on. But numbers told; and, unsupported as they were, they had to fall back, carrying their wounded with them, for they had seen that day that the Russians brained or bayoneted every wounded man they saw.
While they were sullenly retreating, General Adams received a mortal wound, and a cry of sorrow went up from the men. Then suddenly, three field-guns behind them opened fire, and instantly the advance of the Russians was checked, the round-shot crashing through their ranks; but presently, being reinforced by yet another battalion, they again advanced, moving cautiously in skirmishing order through the brushwood. Then the guns opened with ‘case,’ and they retreated.
Soon, coming through the mist, tall black headdresses were seen, and a cheer went up from the sorely smitten 49th as they recognised the Guards. The Grenadiers were moving down grandly to the attack, and the remnants of the 49th and 41st, not waiting to replenish their ammunition, but depending alone upon their bayonets, formed up and advanced on the left of the Guards.
Upon coming up with the enemy, the Guards tried to open fire; but the chambers of their rifles were wet and the caps only snapped, failing to explode the cartridges.
Low, angry growls burst from the Guards till a cheery voice rang out, ‘Never mind, Grenadiers; the steel will do it.’
Then they brought their rifles down to the charge, and without any word of command dashed down upon the Russians, sweeping them from the battery and from the ground on its flanks. The Grenadiers used the few minutes’ respite they had won in drying their rifles by firing caps, and by then the Russians had returned to the attack.
The Guards soon found that the wall of the battery, having nobanquetteon which the defenders might stand, though it might be a protection, yet hindered them from inflicting harm on the enemy, so they left it and engaged the Russians on the flank of it. Again and again did they charge the countless hordes, again and again did the Sandbag Battery change hands, till the slain around it lay in heaps. The Scots Fusiliers joined in the fight, and for two hours a struggle went on that is almost impossible to describe.
The English fought mostly in grim silence; but the Russians, roused to a wild, religious enthusiasm, and maddened byvodka, yelled and howled like demons.
At last the Russians brought up an overwhelming mass of artillery, which opened on the defenders and so played on the slopes behind them that it would have been impossible to bring up reinforcements, even were there any to bring; but all were engaged. Under cover of this fire, six thousand fresh troops were hurled against the remnants of the Guards, less than eight hundred strong at the beginning of the fight; and, the fog again lifting, the colonel of the Grenadiers saw the columns upon columns of flat-capped, white-faced soldiery, with their close-cropped bullet-heads, and their high cheek-bones, throwing up their right shoulders to outflank him. He knew theSandbag Battery was useless to him, and he moved his men so as to form his line to meet the Russians.
Just then over the crest came a long line of bearskins. Jack saw them as quickly as any one.
‘Hallo, Will,’ he cried, ‘what troops are those?’
A sergeant of Grenadiers answered that question. ‘They’re the Coldstreams, sonny’ he said; ‘now we’ll show these long-gowned putty-faces’—alluding to the Russians’ greatcoats, which reached to their feet—‘what stuff the Guards are made of.’
The ‘long gowns,’ finding the Sandbag Battery deserted, had already rushed in with wild yells of delight. This sight made the Grenadiers chafe.
‘Boys,’ said the sergeant who had just spoken to Jack and Will, ‘are we going to let the Coldstreams get back the battery? Who’ll follow me? The Grenadiers have held it and they’ll keep it.’
With a wild cheer a hundred of them dashed down, bayoneting the Russians; and, before the Coldstreams came up, for the seventh time the Sandbag Battery was retaken. Neither Jack nor Will had followed the impetuous sergeant; but they took part in the forward movement which presently set the Okhotsk and Selinghinsk battalions reeling down the hill. And so the fight went on; but slowly the force of thousands against hundreds began to tell, and though every man in the British force was a hero, he could not maintain for ever a struggle against odds ten to one. Russians seemed to spring up on all sides; and, though the earth was cumbered with their dead and wounded, in countless hordes they still came on.
It presently became imperative that the Guards and the remnants of the 49th and 41st should receivereinforcements. The Duke of Cambridge himself had gone some time before to find men to come to the assistance of his beloved Guards; but not a man had arrived.
A desperate attack had just been beaten off, in which Will had received a blow on the head from the butt-end of a rifle which had laid him senseless for a few minutes.
Jack was kneeling beside his injured comrade when a mounted officer tapped his shoulder with his blood-stained sword.
‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I’ve several times noticed you and your comrade to-day using a rifle and bayonet with the best of us, and you’ve done good service, though how on earth you got here I can’t tell.’
‘Accident brought us here, sir,’ replied Jack.
‘Well, it was a lucky chance, and you can render us further service if you will. You’re a cavalryman. Mount my horse, go back to the ridge, and find General Pennefather. Ask him to send us what men he can spare, we’re hard pushed.’
Jack looked at Will and then at the officer.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said the officer; ‘but you can get your comrade up before you on the mare. She’ll carry you both, and your chum will be better in the rear. I can’t go myself, because my place is here with my battalion. We shall have to fight for our very lives, and few if any of us will get out of this. When you find the General, impress upon him that we are almost out of cartridges.’
This amounted to an order, and so, reluctantly, Jack climbed into the saddle which the major vacated; and, two stalwart Guardsmen lifting up Will tenderly and seating him before Jack, he turned his horse’s head uphill. As he went along, bullets whizzed by his ears and several times round-shot ploughed up the ground round him; but he reached the crest, and having placed Will in safety, he had the good fortune to find General Pennefather and his staff. He delivered his message, and the genial Irishman, his face aglow with pleasure at the fight he was enabled to wage against tremendous odds, untrammelled by superiors, said, ‘And what the dickens are you doing here?’
Jack replied, and the General burst out laughing. ‘A lame excuse, youngster,’ he said; ‘but any excuse that takes a man into the fight will pass with me. Now we must see what men we can spare to help the Guards. Keep with me, Lancer, you may be useful, for many of my staff have been bowled over.’
Reinforcements in tens or twenties were found and formed up—men of the 20th, 21st, and 63rd Regiments who had wandered back for ammunition; men who had been in the fight and been driven back, losing their companies; men who were acting as camp-guard. These men, just driblets, fell in and marched to the assistance of those in the Sandbag Battery, who, from the occasional glimpses which could be caught of them, it was seen were waging a stubborn fight.
Then immense masses of the enemy emerging from the Quarry Ravine advanced against the right of the Home Ridge. Perceiving the movement, General Pennefather galloped off there, and Jack, still on the charger of the Guards’ officer, followed.
That part of the ridge was held by four hundred men only; but they were men of historic regiments, the 20th and the 57th. When the Russians camewithin striking distance the 20th delivered their fire; then, with the old Minden yell, a cry practised by that regiment alone, they swooped down on the Russians. The colonel of the 57th bade his men prepare.
‘A volley, then the bayonet,’ he said. ‘Remember Albuera, men, and die hard!’
That regiment, known since Albuera by the proud nickname of the ‘Die Hards,’ needed no second bidding. They sprang upon the flank of the Russians and rolled them up; but another battalion appearing, General Pennefather ordered both the 20th and the 57th to retire to the top of the ridge, where they lay down, and with concentrated fire held the enemy in check.
For three hours, then, the battle had waged, and everywhere, in spite of occasional advantages, the Russians had been defeated. A lull now ensued; the enemy were preparing for their great final effort.
The weather cleared a little, so that surrounding objects could be seen; and, riding behind heroic General Pennefather, Jack presently saw the Russians coming up the slope towards the Home Ridge in enormous columns. They covered the advance of their infantry with a raging artillery fire, and the ridge was swept from end to end.
Presently, just by Jack, the head of a Russian column gained the ridge. There were no English troops in sight; but a French regiment, the 7th of the line, was moving along the crest. It was smitten by the Russian artillery, it wavered and faltered. An English staff-officer rode up and harangued them in broken French. Jack, speaking the language fluently, also galloped up.
‘Comrades, brothers, stand firm!’ he cried; ‘prove that you are the sons of the heroes who under the great Napoleon conquered half Europe.’
The battalion advanced; but the Russians poured in a volley when they retreated down the hillside. The troops on the Home Ridge were in danger, the victorious Russians were advancing, when two hundred men of the 55th and 77th flew at the mass, charged it, tore through it from end to end; and the Russians, paralysed by the very audacity of the attack, retired down the hill. They were not defeated though; they rallied and returned to the attack.
The French 7th Regiment advanced; some English troops who had been driven back formed up beside them. The French deployed right in the face of the advancing Russians. They delivered a volley and were reloading when a panic seemed to seize them. They saw the Russians would be upon them before they had finished loading, and they had not that calm confidence in their prowess which enables the British to charge home with the bayonet. They began to fall back, when General Pennefather, in strong, vigorous language, bade them stand; many of his officers did likewise, and the English soldiers on their left shouted out encouragingly. The French soldiers listened; they took heart, but the Russians were then only a few paces from them.
Suddenly the enemy’s leading battalions halted, and began to gaze nervously over their shoulders. A tremendous tumult broke out behind them. They saw their supporting battalions reel and stagger, then weaken.
The English around their General, looking from the vantage of their seats on horseback, saw the gallantDaubeney with thirty men of the 55th dash at the flank of the whole Russian battalion, strike in, lose itself in the horde of Russians; then—by stabbing, kicking, punching, heaving—literally tear a way through from flank to flank, throwing them into fearful disorder. This disorder spread to the first battalion of Russians, who, thinking they were attacked by numbers, wavered.
General Pennefather gave a tremendous cheer, those with him took it up; the handful of English on the flank of the French sprang forward, and a fierce fight began. The French officers cried out, ‘Drummers to the front.’
In an instant they were beating apas de charge; the French gave a cry, and with levelled bayonets dashed on the foe, who were driven down the hill with great slaughter.
The Russians this time, however, were in grave earnest. They rallied, and again attacked along the whole line with great vigour. But the British artillery had gained the ascendant, and was doing enormous damage with two eighteen-pounders which Lord Raglan had caused to be dragged up to the front.
The whole of the Russian battalions concentrated their fire on these guns; and although they struck down one-tenth of the men working them, so magnificently were they handled that they smashed up gun after gun of the Russians and effectually quieted their fire.
It was then that every available man was brought up to repel the final Russian attack. More French troops arrived, with them being a cavalry regiment, the 4th Chasseurs d’Afrique.
They passed close by Jack, and to his surprise hesaw the remnants of the Light Brigade, the whole only two hundred strong, acting in support of the French cavalry.
Barrymore saw Jack, and immediately called him, and Jack took his place in the ranks. There was no time then for explanations, and he rode on with his regiment till they came under a tremendous artillery fire. A shell burst right in amongst them, and several men and horses fell.
‘Poor Harry Scarfe is down,’ cried Jack.
‘Ay,’ growled Barrymore, ‘and so is our cornet; that leaves us only two officers.’
Unfortunately both men were killed; and, several other casualties occurring, the cavalry was retired.
The French General decided to recall his troops, for they had all met with discomfiture. One regiment of Zouaves, however, remained, and with the remnant of our Guards they advanced towards the Sandbag Battery.
So fierce was the attack the thus allied brigade delivered that the Russians were hurled back against the wall. The only outlets were the two embrasures; and, encumbered by their long coats, the Russians tried in vain to force themselves through. They were caught in a trap and a terrible slaughter ensued, the pursuit following them right down to the Quarry Ravine.
Along the whole line the British were equally successful, the Russians were hurled back; and the eighteen-pounders continuing to do grand work, the Russian artillery fire was gradually overcome.
General Pennefather ordered a fresh advance of his handful of men, only a few hundreds being left of his three thousand six hundred of the morning.
‘Forward once more, boys,’ he said, ‘and we’ll lick ’em yet—lick ’em to the devil!’
Once more they advanced, once more crossed bayonets with the sulky foe, no longer yelling like demons, but now fighting with the stubbornness of despair. Gradually they drove them back, the Russians again giving vent to that wailing cry of despair that had been heard on the heights of the Alma.
About one o’clock a staff officer with Lord Raglan observed the Russians beginning to withdraw their artillery; then the news flew round that the enemy acknowledged his defeat, and at last the battle, the great ‘Soldiers’ Battle,’ was won.
A mass of two thousand men, all gathered closely together, formed to cover the retreat of the Russian artillery. The eighteen-pounders were turned upon them, and the balls tore through, carrying cruel destruction with them.
The moment had arrived for pursuit; but the fasting British were too exhausted to move, the French General refused to advance his troops unless the British supported him, and the Russians were allowed to fall sullenly back.
There was no semblance of riot or disorder. The defeated battalions, still in their thousands, retreated in good order.
By three o’clock Mount Inkermann was free of Russians, all but the ghastly thousands of dead and wounded.
The French artillery followed the foe and did them some damage; but the ships from the harbour opened on them, and they retreated.
Night settled down in mist and fog and gloom, hiding the horrors on those blood-stained slopes. By eight o’clock the last gun had passed back into the Russian lines of defence.
The great battle of Inkermann was lost—and won!
WHEN Jack got back to the lines of his regiment he found that Will, not much the worse for his broken head, had already returned.
It was more than likely that the timely warning they had been able to give the picket of the 41st saved a surprise on the part of the Russians which might have been most awkward for the British.
Jack and Will had, however, been ‘absent without leave;’ and though in their own regiment the part they had played became known, yet no official mention was made of it, for awkward questions might have been asked.
The next morning was bright and cold, and the whole of the battlefield could be seen. It was then, and only then, that the terrible nature of the struggle of the day before could be realised; and it was seen that the fog, though most confusing at the time, had yet been a blessing, for it had prevented the British from being disheartened by the tens of thousands who had been pitted against them, and the Russians from discovering the mere handful of British by whom they were opposed.
Early in the morning shoals of people from Balaclava—Greeks, Armenians, Turks, sailors from the fleet, and others—came to visit the battlefield, taking medals, ribbons, crucifixes, chains, and so on as mementos of the great fight.
To prevent this the cavalry were ordered to turnout as patrols, and to keep every one off the battlefield but those engaged there. All day long Jack and Will were thus engaged, and a terrible duty it was.
‘It’s worse than fighting,’ said Jack. ‘Just look there, Will, where we fought so long at the Sandbag Battery. The dead are literally in heaps—see, eight deep! English, Russians, and French, all one on top of the other!’
The groans and cries of the wounded as they were borne past were heart-rending. The Russians lay around in thousands, and it seemed as if the task of gathering them in would never finish. The wounded were seen to first, being carried to the hospital tents. The dead Russians were placed side by side in long trenches. Even while thus engaged, the enemy on several occasions opened fire from Sebastopol on the burying-parties, much to the indignation of officers and men.
On the second day Jack’s regiment had to go down to Balaclava for stores. Near the town they heard the cheery tones of a band playing ‘Cheer, boys, cheer!’ the words of which the men were singing, and saw an infantry regiment, just landed, marching up to the front.
The fresh-coloured, smart-looking lads were cheering loudly, for they had heard of the glorious victory of Inkermann. Presently they came abreast of the Lancers, and they stared hard at the handful of war-worn, tattered, bearded, dirty horsemen, with battered caps and rusty arms. One youngster said to another as they passed Jack, ‘What troops are these, Bill, old man?’
‘Look like the “Beggars’ Own,”’answered Bill. ‘I reckon they’re Frenchies.”
‘No fear,’ said another; ‘they’re English; look at their faces.’
‘Crikey, Bill!’ said the first speaker, ‘they ain’t much to look at; a wash ’u’d do ’em good,’ at which there was a laugh, and several of the troopers who had ridden down the Valley of Death coloured redly.
‘Poor fellows!’ said Barrymore to Jack, ‘wait till they’ve been in the Crimea a fortnight and taken a turn at trench and picket duty, they’ll understand things a bit then.’
Alas! within a month that regiment had lost two-thirds of its number, mostly from cholera.
The work in the trenches was being pushed forward rapidly; but there was no longer any hope that Sebastopol could be taken by assault. True, the Russians had lost heart over Inkermann, and it was doubtful whether they could again be got—at least for months—to come out in the open and face the English, and all felt that the siege must be a long and protracted affair.
The losses in the trenches and from sickness were nearly a hundred a day, and the handful of men before Sebastopol knew that unless speedy reinforcements arrived they would be absolutely at the mercy of the enemy. A week after Inkermann, had the Russians attempted another sortie the result might have been different.
The weather changed, and it began to get bitterly cold, and rain fell in torrents.
‘I believe we shall have to winter here,’ said Will to Jack one night as they shiveringly turned into their tent.
‘Then may the Lord help us,’ replied Jack, ‘for few of us will live to see the spring again.’
‘It almost seems as if the people at home had forgotten us.’
‘It’s easy to do that, sitting before a cosy fire after a good dinner, your feet in slippers, a book in your hand, and’——
‘For goodness’ sake shut up, Jack, or I shall murder you,’ said Will, ‘to draw such a picture with us here, hungry, cold, and wet, with nothing but the sodden ground to sleep on. Ugh, it’s awful!’
Jack and Will occupied a tent together. Since Balaclava all troop distinctions had been lost. The handful of survivors formed themselves into one regiment, the men of different corps making troops. Since that day in the North Valley the survivors seemed drawn together by a mutual bond of sympathy, and in place of the jealousy often existing between regiments there was a feeling of good-fellowship.
On the particular night on which Will had his grumble it poured with rain, and the canvas getting saturated, the water soon began to leak through. Jack and Will wrapped their cloaks round them to keep some of the rain off, and so inured to hardships were they that they managed to sleep.
About five o’clock, however, they were both awakened by the streams of water which flowed underneath the flaps of the tent and were saturating them. Cold and miserable, they both sat up, listening to the wind howling through the camp. It got louder and louder; the sides of the tent began to rise and flutter, the rain driving right into the lads’ faces. The cords creaked and the pole began to bend.
‘Blest if I don’t think the lot’ll come down directly,’ said Will.
‘No fear,’ replied Jack; ‘it’s weathered as bad before; this pole is very strong.’
The wind simply shrieked, while the rain was dashed in sheets upon the side of the tent.
‘It certainlyisviolent,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve heard they get bad storms here, but’——
Snap—crash!the pole of the tent had broken off close to the ground, and Jack and Will were struggling under a heap of wet, cold canvas. Painfully, and at considerable risk, they fought their way out, and at last stood erect.
Heavens, what a sight met their gaze! Nearly every tent was down; many were being whirled sky-high in the blast; others covered the struggling forms of their former occupants. Men in every state of dress and undress were to be seen, some trying to chase their belongings, others having as much as they could do to stand up against the blast, many only staring blankly at each other. All round was a sea of mud; this was picked up by the wind, and being whirled along soon covered everybody and everything with a wet, freezing coating of earth.
Everything that Jack and Will possessed was under the wreck of their tent, and they fought manfully to rescue some of their things. Jack at last got his boots; but he had to sit down in mud almost to his waist to put them on. His fur-jacket, spoil from the convoy at Mackenzie’s Farm, he also got, and his dress-cap. Will rescued part of his things too; then the wind picked up the tent and whirled it away.
Tentless, Jack and Will looked around them. A captain of Hussars, in his shirt only, was tearing after a pair of overalls, which he at last captured only to find they were not his own. Men everywhere werechasing articles, while the air was filled with headdresses, caps, coats, wet blankets, even pieces of furniture from the officers’ tents.
And still the force of the wind increased. Wagons were overturned; the horses were knocked down and rolled over, then getting up, they broke loose from the picket-ropes and rushed madly out over the plain. The skies were leaden-coloured, the wind howled fiercer and fiercer; snow, sleet, rain all fell together; every one was soon knee-deep in mud.
Presently a cry arose, ‘The hospital-tent is down!’ and this was seen to be the case. Hundreds of poor fellows suffering from ghastly wounds received at Inkermann and in the trenches since were exposed to all the fury of that dreadful storm, and many succumbed.
All who were able to stand fought their way over to the hospital-tent, and, moving up to their knees in mud, lashed by the storm, they helped to carry the poor, uncomplaining fellows behind walls, into barns and stables, anywhere, so that they could get a little shelter until the fury of the elements abated.
All the morning Jack and Will worked at the hospital; and when they had finished, a good-hearted doctor took the lads into a hut which had been erected for his stores, and there gave them a hot cup of tea each—luxury of luxuries—some beef and ration-biscuits, and then a glass of brandy. To the doctor’s kindness the two lads always attributed the fact that they took no serious harm from the effects of the storm.
About midday the wind changed; it got piercingly cold, and snow fell heavily, soon covering everything with a mantle of white. During the afternoon thewind abated somewhat, and some attempts were made to recapture and re-erect tents; but only a few were recovered, and the ground being literally turned to mud the pegs would not hold. A few were got up by some means or other; but, the wind again rising, they were all blown down again.
Night approached, and the storm showed but small signs of abating. Jack and Will, huddled up in their cloaks, wet through and through, were sheltering from the wind under the lee of a wall, when a sergeant of the 8th Hussars whom both knew passed them.
‘Hallo, boys,’ he said, ‘there’s small comfort there. Have ye no better shelter?’
‘No, Flannigan,’ replied the lads.
‘Come with me, then. I’m going up to the barn used as a stable by the men of “Ours” who are Lord Raglan’s escort.’
The lads gladly followed the kindly sergeant, and presently reached the great barn. Here they found a mixed company, Hussars, Lancers, linesmen, officers, privates, all mixed up together, huddling round two fires which they had managed to light. There were a number of horses in the barn which the smoke from the fires made very restless. It is impossible to describe the combination of smells in the place; but it was heaven compared with outside, and thankfully Jack and Will squeezed up to a fire, and standing in their steaming garments thankfully accepted the bit of fried ration-pork offered to them, and drank a tot of rum.
Dozing by fits and starts, disturbed by the constant going and coming of different people, the neighing and stamping of the horses, and a tremendous cannonading opened by the Russians on the French lines,they passed the night, and awoke in the morning to find a bright, cold sky, the country covered in snow, every place ankle-deep in mud; but oh, blessing of blessings! the wind gone, and the sun, the genial sun, shining gloriously!
JACK and Will, both feeling sore and stiff, went off together to their own lines, and were busy with their horses when Sergeant-major Barrymore came striding along.
‘Oh Blair,’ he cried out, ‘I’ve been looking for you. Get saddled up as quickly as you can; you’ve got to go down to Balaclava with a despatch.’
‘Right you are, major,’ replied Jack; ‘I’ll just scrape a few pounds of mud off my poor beast, then I’ll be ready.’
Jack was soon on his way, and many a sad sight did he see as he went along. Dozens of poor fellows who had died of exposure during that dreadful night were being carried off for interment. The sufferings of those in the trenches had been terrible, and many a stalwart soldier had succumbed to the fury of the storm.
The road to Balaclava was a mere quagmire, and Jack had to struggle along through lines of ammunition-mules, artillery wagons, and so on, the poor exhausted beasts being hardly able to drag the vehicles through the sludge. Dead horses and cattle were scattered all over the country, with the débris of the camp, personal belongings, roofs of huts, and shreds of tents.
Balaclava itself far exceeded in filth and dirt anything that Varna had ever been. Its main street was simply a channel of mud, through which horses,camels, mules, soldiers, and sailors, with artillery and transport-wagons, continually fought their way. The air was full of the cries of Turks, Arabs, Italians, Maltese, Greeks, Tartars, Bulgarians, all offering the worst wares at fabulous prices.
From the side lanes one heard continually the cries of pain and the prayers of Moslem soldiers dying by dozens of cholera and other diseases. Since their conduct on the 25th of October the Turks had been treated with contempt by the British, and, finding no favour at the camp, had made Balaclava their headquarters, where, neglected by their own government, they had contracted the seeds of disease and made Balaclava a very pest-house. The bodies of the Turks lay sometimes for days where they had died. The stench in these narrow lanes was appalling, and the different forms of human suffering which met the sight at every turn enough to shock the most callous.
As Jack’s horse slowly and painfully made its way down towards the harbour, where he had to deliver his despatch, signs of damage done by the great storm met him on every side. Windows were blown in, roofs torn off, and at the neck of the harbour Jack saw two or three large boats which had been driven up inland and smashed to pieces. Floating on the waters of the harbour were trusses of hay, heavy pieces of timber, broken spars and masts, and all sorts of other things, indicating that great damage must have been done to the shipping.
From those employed in the harbour Jack learnt sad news indeed. During the storm twenty-one vessels had been wrecked. The new steamshipPrince, which had arrived but a few days previously with the 46th Regiment, had gone down with a cargovalued at half a million aboard her. The whole of the winter clothing sent out for the troops, and of which they were fearfully in want, was lost. Forty thousand thick suits, with woollen underclothes, socks, gloves, boots, and blankets; hundreds and thousands of pounds of biscuit, salt-meat, coffee, and rice, thousands of gallons of rum; millions of pounds of forage and compressed hay; and millions of rounds of ball-cartridge, with all the artillery reserve ammunition were lost in that terrible storm.
Jack was appalled at the news, and as he made his way back to camp, through a biting snow and sleet storm, it seemed as if the very elements themselves were fighting for the Russians against the Allies.
Those were terrible days! Rain, fog, frost, and snow, followed one another in rapid succession. The winter set in with unwonted severity; the camp became a quagmire, and the men in the trenches were often up to the middle of their thighs in mud and slush for sixteen hours at a time. The road to Balaclava was often impassable, the putrid carcasses and skeletons of horses, camels, and mules lay half-buried in mud from one end of it to the other; and for days no sugar, coffee, tea, or rum was issued to the troops; biscuit and meat were also scarce. There was very little in Balaclava, and it was impossible to get what was there up to the camp. Thus, only half-fed, in rags, exposed to the rigour of a severe climate, working often twenty hours out of the twenty-four, the men broke down. Cholera raged more fiercely than ever, and things looked in a bad way in the camp of the Allies.
The Russians gave them no peace. By day and bynight they kept up a heavy fire and made frequent sorties; but the British, with dogged persistence, pushed their parallels nearer and nearer, repulsed the sorties, and snapped their fingers at the cannonading.
‘Heaven help us!’ said Jack to Will one morning about the middle of December. ‘I’m for Balaclava to-day, and my poor horse can hardly stand. It’s no good saddling him, for I know he couldn’t carry me. He won’t last another day, I’m sure.’
‘He’ll only go the way of most of the others,’ said Will. ‘There are only twenty-seven horses fit for duty left in the whole brigade.’
‘I know; we lost five the night before last and three last night,’ said Jack gloomily. ‘Will, unless we soon get big reinforcements from home, with stores and warm clothing, England will wake up one morning to find that her army in the Crimea is a thing of the past.’
‘Serve ’em right too,’ said Will as he proceeded to twist some hay-bands round his legs, his overalls having been worn to tatters weeks before. ‘Jack,’ he continued, ‘have you got a bit of that string left? I might be able to tie the sole of my left boot on so that it will last for another day.’
Jack, who was busy sewing a patch made of a shred of old blanket on his own overalls, passed Will the piece of string he had brought up from Balaclava; then went on with his work.
The boots and fur-coat he had become possessed of on the day of the capture of the convoy by Mackenzie’s Farm proved of the utmost value to him, and in this respect he was better off than Will.
Jack’s horse being too far gone for further work, Barrymore told him he must take his.
‘Thank God, poor Dainty did not live to be starved to death here,’ said Jack as he and Will mounted, the latter going out on escort-duty with a mixed troop.
A party of Rifles went by, many of the men having made themselves a sort of smock from blankets fastened round their waists with their belts, their trousers being patched with every variety of stuff, from pieces of cloth cut from Russian uniforms to scraps of canvas or bagging.
Jack joined the squad, mostly men of the Guards, who were going down to Balaclava for supplies; bearded, haggard-looking fellows, whose greatcoats were thick with successive layers of mud, and whose feet were almost bare, but in whose eyes burned that fierce, unquenchable light that spoke of a resolve to conquer or die.
The journey was the same as dozens of others Jack had made, except that Balaclava looked filthier than ever and more full of misery. On the road back to camp several horses, after stumbling a few times, fell one by one. They would lie in the mud looking up with lack-lustre eyes, their tongues hanging out. A few spasmodic movements of the legs, smoothing down the mud, would follow, and then the poor beasts would die, being left where they had fallen—a few more carcasses to rot and putrefy; while their loads would be distributed among the other animals or on the men’s shoulders.
December wore on and Christmas approached. Jack received letters from his mother and sisters and from the Lelands. Mrs Blair’s and the girls’ were full of thankfulness that their dear one had escaped so far, prayed that the war might soon be over, and wound up by saying they had sent him a smallhamper which they hoped he would find useful at Christmas. The hamper contained some warm shirts and socks, a bottle of brandy, a ham, and a plum-pudding. Poor Jack could almost have cried when he read the list, just the very things that would be most acceptable; but he knew well enough he would never see the hamper, and he never did.
What became of the things sent to the soldiers during the Crimean war remains a mystery to this day.
CHRISTMAS Day came and went, the gallant heroes doing their best to be jovial; but, cold, ragged, and starved, it was a sad day for them.
Early in the New Year the remnants of the brigade were returning from a reconnaissance they had made towards Tschorgoun, where, it had been stated, a large Russian force was gathering.
It was a bitterly cold day, with a freezing wind which penetrated the ragged, tattered uniforms of the men and chilled them to the bone. Jack was riding with his face well buried in the collar of his cloak and his right hand in his pocket, when he turned to Will, who was riding by his side, to make some remark to him. He was immediately struck by the pallor of his friend’s face and the way in which it was drawn as though in agony.
‘Will, dear old Will, what’s the matter?’ cried Jack.
For answer Will only groaned.
Jack spurred closer just in time to catch him as he reeled in his saddle.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ repeated Jack in agitated tones.
A couple of troopers dismounted, and Will was lifted from his saddle and laid on the ground.
‘Cholera,’ said one of the men sententiously.
‘Cheer up, Will!’ cried Jack. ‘What is it, old man?’
‘Cramps, awful pains,’ moaned Will. ‘Leave me, Jack; I’m done for.’
‘Nonsense! You’ll soon be all right.”
A staff-officer who happened to have some brandy in his flask trotted up and gave the bottle to Will. The spirit rather revived him, and some of his companions helped him up in front of Jack, and they managed to get back to camp. Here Jack got Will to their tent, wrapped him up in both their blankets, which were fortunately dry; and, getting some charcoal from a man in the artillery, lit a fire.
All that night Jack sat up by his friend, soothing him, rubbing him, and wiping the damp perspiration from his brow, while he heaped everything in the tent on him to keep him warm. It was a fight for poor Will between death and Jack; but morning broke and found Will still alive, though insensible.
Barrymore came in and brought a doctor. He looked at Will, shook his head, and said,’Poor fellow! he might pull through if he had medical comforts and good nursing; but here, I’m afraid, he’s booked;’ and he shrugged his shoulders.
‘He sha’n’t die if I can help it,’ said Jack doggedly.—‘Barrymore, you must get me excused from duty. I’ll nurse Will, and if mortal man can save him I will.’
The doctor looked admiringly at the young sergeant. ‘My poor fellow,’ he said,’you’ll only kill yourself.’
‘Then I accept my fate.’
The doctor went off; but in half-an-hour an orderly returned from him, bringing some soup, medicine, and a few instructions.
All day Jack stuck to his task, and at night Barrymore helped him. In the morning the kind-hearted doctor again came in.
‘He’s got a splendid constitution,’ he said, ‘and youth is on his side, or he would have been dead long since. He must be got away from here anyway. There’s a convoy of sick going down to Balaclava to-day for Scutari. I’ll send round a litter for him.’
Will was conscious and heard these words, and when they were alone he said feebly, ‘Jack, old man, the best chum a fellow ever had, don’t send me to Scutari; we’ve heard of the horrors of that place. Let me die here. It makes little difference how or when we go, the few of us who are left.’
‘No, Will; we can save you if you get into hospital. I must go back to my duty to-morrow, and then there will be no one to look after you.’
There were tears in Will’s eyes as he pressed Jack’s hand.
Later on a hospital orderly came round with a litter, and, wrapped in the blankets and his own and Jack’s cloak, Will was laid upon it; then Jack took one end of the litter and the orderly the other, when they joined the convoy of sick going down to Balaclava. It was a ghastly procession. Some wagons contained the men wounded in the trenches during the night, and these groaned terribly as they were roughly jolted along, while the blood oozed between the planks and dripped into the mud and snow. Others, stricken with fever and cholera, presented a ghastly spectacle, with closed eyes, open mouths, and attenuated faces; only a thin steam of breath showing they were still alive.
Some were strapped on horseback, and just in front of Jack was one poor fellow who, having died on the road, still sat on his horse, the staring eyes wide open,the teeth clenched on his protruding tongue, while the head and body nodded with a terrible grotesqueness that filled with horror those who saw it. From many of the litters protruded hands and feet from which raw flesh and skin were literally hanging; these were cases of frost-bite.
Amidst such terrible sights Jack at last got Will to Balaclava, and was fortunate in being able at once to get him aboard the vessel that was sailing that night for Scutari. Poor Will was half-insensible, and Jack was spared the pain of leave-taking.
‘God bless you, old boy,’ he muttered as he took a last look at his friend and thought of the day when he had first seen the laughing, rosy, happy-looking trumpeter in Hounslow Barracks.
Jack got a mount at Balaclava, possibly the same horse on which the man had died coming down; and, feeling more depressed than he had been since the fatal 25th of October, he started back. Snow and sleet were driving in his face, and he could not see where he was going. With head bent he kept on, leaving his horse to find its way, he probably having made many a journey to Balaclava before.
It got very dark, and Jack reined in to look about him. He could see but a few yards, and he did not recognise any of his surroundings. Stunted snow-covered bushes were round him, and he missed the carcasses of the beasts which had died on that terrible road.
Heavens! the horse must have strayed! He was lost! He tried to look about him; but the bits of frozen rain cut into his face and prevented him from seeing more than a yard or two around him. He spurred his jaded horse and went forward a littlequicker, vainly staring to right and left. Of a sudden he saw several mounted figures in front of him. They must be some stragglers riding from Balaclava to the camp, he thought; and, pushing forward, he hailed them. They turned, and then Jack’s heart gave a great thump—they were Cossacks!
Immediately wheeling his horse, Jack dug in his spurs, while he wildly endeavoured to draw his sword, the only weapon he then carried. His cloak, however, was entangled round the hilt, and he could not get at it. Shouts behind him showed he had been recognised as an Englishman.
A sharp report rang out. Jack’s horse gave a lurch, then fell heavily, throwing its rider. Next moment a mounted figure dashed up, something bright whizzed by Jack’s shoulder, and a lance-blade ripped through his cloak and the sleeve of his jacket, only just grazing the flesh, but sticking six inches in the ground and pinning him down. He tried to free himself from his wounded horse, but the lance held him too securely.
In an instant half-a-dozen flat-faced Cossacks were round him, and one quieted Jack’s horse by placing the muzzle of his carbine in his ear and firing. Then they observed how Jack was pinned down by the lance, and the spectacle seemed to tickle them, for they laughed merrily. The man whose lance it was, dismounting, withdrew the weapon by using both hands to it, standing on Jack’s body to do so. He looked at the blade, and seeing it bright realised that Jack was practically unhurt, on which he called out to his companions, who, dismounting, threw themselves on Jack, tore off his cloak, which one of them promptly annexed, took his sword, and then with the lines that