Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/132

 106 I5ATTLH OK TIIK AT,MA. ciiAi'. to carry forward lii.s Divisit)ii, lie was without the . means of sending swift orders along his line. But towards the right of Sir George Brown a movement corresponding with his determination General had already begun. General Codrington, ordered ' to advance m line and not to stop till he had crossed the river,' had obeyed very swiftly ; but having moved with a converging tendency during their passage through the vineyards and the river, the men of his brigade and the other troops acting with them were now thickly clustered under the left bank in a chain which took its bends from the winding of the stream. Codrington was at this time between the 33d Regiment and the 23d Fusiliers. He strove to do something to- wards restoring the formation of his troops ; but these, jammed together, in a crowd that had been twisted into fantastic shape by the bends of the river's bank, and besides, standing helpless under the fire of the skirmishers shooting down upon their heads from above, could hardly even try to perform an evolution requiring free space and time. And, if for a moment, it seemed pos- sible that any approach to a formation under the bank could be effected, the hope was rudely de- stroyed ; for, on ground lower down the river, a body of the enemy's light troops found for them- selves a spot yielding them shelter, yet so placed that it enabled them to pour a flanking tire along the strip or ledge which divided the stream from the bank, and this at a part where the earth was alive with our devoted soldiery.