Then back to back, pale with fury, their eyes flashing, their teeth set, fearless and resolute, their feet encumbered with the dying and the dead, fought the Coldstream Guardsmen, struggling for very life; the ground a slippery puddle with blood and brains, and again and again the clash of the bayonets was heard as the musket barrels were crossed. Their ammunition was soon expended; but clubbing their weapons they dashed at the enemy with the butt-ends; and hurling even stones at their heads, broke through the dense masses, and leaving at least one thousand Muscovites dead behind them, rejoined their comrades, whom Sir George Cathcart was leading to the advance, when a ball whistled through his heart, and he fell to rise no more.
The combat was quite unequal; our troops began slowly to retire towards their own lines, but fighting every inch of the way and pressed hard by the Russians, who bayonetted or brained by the butt-end every wounded man they found; and by eleven o'clock they were close to the tents of the Second Division.
The rain of bullets sowed thickly all the turf like a leaden shower, and shred away clouds of leaves and twigs from the gorse and other bushes; but long ere the foe had come thus far, we had our share and more in the terrible game. Exchanging fire with them at twenty yards' distance, the roar of the musketry, the shouts and cheers, the yells of defiance or agony, the explosion of shells overhead, the hoarse sound of the round shot, as they tore up the earth in deeper furrows than ever ploughshare formed, made a very hell of Inkermann, that valley of blood and suffering, of death and cruelty; but dense clouds of smoke, replacing the mist, enveloped it for a time, and veiled many of its horrors from the eye.
Bathurst and Sayer, Vane and Millet of ours were all down by this time; many of our men had also fallen; and from the death-clutch or the relaxed fingers of more than one poor ensign had the tattered colour which bore the Red Dragon been taken, by those who were fated to fall under it in turn. I could see nothing of Caradoc; but I heard that three balls had struck the revolver in his belt. Poor Hugh Price fell near me, shot through the chest, and was afterwards found, like many others, with his brains dashed out. In the third repulse of the Russians, as we rushed headlong after them with levelled bayonets, I found myself suddenly opposed by an officer of rank mounted on a gray horse, the flanks and trappings of which were splashed by blood, whether its own or that of the rider, I knew not. Furiously, by every energy, with his voice, which was loud and authoritative, and by brandishing his sword, he was endeavouring to rally his men, a mingled mass of the Vladimir Battalion and the flat-capped Kazan Light Infantry.
"Pot that fellow; down with him!" cried several voices; "maybe he's old Osten-Sacken himself."
Many shots missed him, as the men fired with fixed bayonets, when suddenly he turned his vengeance on me, and checking his horse for a second, cut at my head with his sword. Stooping, I avoided his attack, but shot his horse in the head. Heavily the animal tumbled forward, with its nose between its knees; and as the rider fell from the saddle and his cap flew off, I recognised Volhonski. A dozen of Fusileers had their bayonets at his throat, when I struck them up with my sword, and interceding, took him prisoner.
"Allow me, if taken, to preserve my sword," said he, in somewhat broken English.
"No, no; by ----, no! disarm him, Captain Hardinge," cried several of our men, who had already shot more than one Russian officer when in the act of killing the wounded.
He smiled with proud disdain, and snapping the blade across his knee, threw the fragments from him.
"Though it is a disgrace alike for Russian to retreat or yield, I yield myself to you, Captain Hardinge," said he in French, and presenting his hand; but ere I could take it, I felt a shot strike me on the back part of the head. Luckily it was a partially spent one, though I knew it not then.
A sickness, a faintness, came over me, and I had a wild and clamorous fear that all was up with me then; but I strove to ignore the emotion, to brandish my sword, to shout to my company, "Come on, men, come on!" to carry my head erect, soldierlike and proudly. Alas for human nerves and poor human nature! My voice failed me; I reeled. "Spare me, blessed God!" I prayed, then fell forward on my face, and felt the rush of our own men, as they swept forward in the charge to the front; and then darkness seemed to steal over my sight, and unconsciousness over every other sense, and I remembered no more.
So while I lay senseless there, the tide of battle turned in the valley, and re-turned again. But not till General Canrobert, with three regiments of fiery little Zouaves, five of other infantry, and a strong force of artillery, made a furious attack on the Russian flank, with all his drums beating the _pas de charge_. The issue of the battle was then no longer doubtful.
The Russians wavered and broke, and with a strange wail of despair, such as that they gave at Alma, when they feared that the angel of light had left them, they fled towards Sebastopol, trodden down like sheep by the French and British soldiers, all mingled pell-mell, in fierce and vengeful pursuit. By three in the afternoon all was over, and we had won another victory.
But our losses were terrible. Seven of our generals were killed or wounded; we had two thousand five hundred and nine officers and men killed, wounded, or missing; but more than fourteen thousand Russians lay on the ground which had been by both armies so nobly contested, and of these five thousand were killed.
CHAPTER XXXVII.--THE ANGEL OF HORROR.
When consciousness returned, I found the dull red evening sun shining down the long valley of Inkermann, and that, save moans and cries for aid and water, all seemed terribly still now.
A sense of weakness and oppression, of incapacity for action and motion, were my first sensations. I feared that other shot must have struck me after I had fallen, and that both my legs were broken. The cause of this, after a time, became plain enough: a dead artillery horse was lying completely over my thighs, and above it and them lay the wheel of a shattered gun carriage; and weak as I was then, to attempt extrication from either unaided was hopeless. Thus I was compelled to lie helplessly amid a sickening puddle of blood, enduring a thirst that is unspeakable, but which was caused by physical causes and excitement, with the anxiety consequent on the battle. The aspect of the dead horse, which first attracted me, was horrible. A twelve-pound shot had struck him below the eyes, making a hole clean through his head; the brain had dropped out, and lay with his tongue and teeth upon the grass. The dead and wounded lay thickly around me, as indeed they did over all the field. Some of the former, though with eyes unclosed and jaws relaxed, had a placid expression in their white waxen faces. These had died of gun-shot wounds. The expressions of pain or anguish lingered longest in those who had perished by the bayonet. Over all the valley lay bodies in heaps, singly or by two and threes, with swarms of flies settling over them; shakoes, glazed helmets, bearskin-caps, bent bayonets, broken muskets, swords, hairy knapsacks, bread-bags, shreds of clothing, torn from the dead and the living by showers of grape and canister, cooking-kettles, round shot and fragments of shells, with pools of noisome blood, lay on every hand.
Truly the Angel of Horror, and of Death, too, had been there. I saw several poor fellows, British as well as Russian, expire within the first few minutes I was able to look around me. One whose breast bore several medals and orders, an officer of the Kazan Light Infantry, prayed very devoutly and crossed himself in his own blood ere he expired. Near me a corporal of my own regiment named Prouse, who had been shot through the brain, played fatuously for a time with a handful of grass, and then, lying gently back, passed away without a moan. A Zouave, a brown, brawny, and soldier-like fellow, who seemed out of his senses also, was very talkative and noisy.
"Ouf!" I heard him say; "it is as wearisome as a sermon or a funeral this! Were I a general, the capture of Sebastopol should be as easy as a game of dominoes.--Yes, Isabeau, ma belle coquette, kiss me and hold up my head. Vive la gloire! Vive l'eau de vie! A bas la mélancolie! A bas la Russe!" he added through his clenched teeth hoarsely, as he fell back. The jaw relaxed, his head turned on one side, and all was over.
Of Volhonski I could see nothing except his gray horse, which lay dead, in all its trappings, a few yards off; but I afterwards learned that he had been retaken by the Russians on their advance after the fall of poor Sir George Cathcart.
There was an acute pain in the arm that had been injured--fractured--when saving Estelle; and as a kind of stupor, filled by sad and dreamy thoughts, stole over me, they were all of her. The roar of the battle had passed away, but there was a kind of drowsy hum in my ears, and, for a time, strangely enough, I fancied myself with her in the Park or Rotten-row. I seemed to see the brilliant scene in all the glory of the season: the carriages; the horses, bay or black, with their shining skins and glittering harness; the powdered coachmen on their stately hammer-cloths; the gaily-liveried footmen; the ladies cantering past in thousands, so exquisitely dressed, so perfectly mounted, so wonderful in their loveliness--women the most beautiful in the world; and there, too, were the young girls, whose season was to come, and the ample dowagers, whose seasons were long since past, lying back among the cushions, amid ermine and fur; and with all this Estelle was laughing and cantering by my side. Then we were at the opera--another fantastic dream--the voices of Grisi and Mario were blending there, and as its music seemed to die away, once more we were at Craigaderyn, under its shady woods, with the green Welsh hills, snow-capped Snowdon and Carneydd Llewellyn, in the distance, and voices and music and laughter--some memory of Dora's fête--seemed to be about us. So while lying there, on that ghastly field of Inkermann, between sleeping and waking, I dreamed of her who was so far away--of the sweet companionship that might never come again; of the secret tie that bound us; of the soft dark eyes that whilom had looked lovingly into mine; of the sweetly-modulated voice that was now falling merrily, perhaps, on other ears, and might fall on mine no more. And a vague sense of happiness, mingled with the pain caused by the half-spent shot and the wild confusion and suffering of the time, stole over me. Waking, these memories became