Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/230

 204: BATTLE OF Till: ALMA. CHAP. A close c<)lmiin of iniantiy lias only small means ^' of offence, and is itself a thing so easy to hurt that every volley it receives from steady troops must load it with corpses and wounded men. Tested strictly in that way — tested strictly by its small means of hurting people, and the case with which it can be hurt — the close column is a weak thing to iight with ; and yet it has power over the troops of most nations, because its grandeur well fits it for weighing u])un the imaginations of men. But Lacy Yea and his islanders were not so fashioned by nature, nor so tamed down by much learning, as to be liable to be easily coerced in any subtle, metaphysical way ; aiul although the shots of individual soldiers and small knots of men had not, of course, the crushing power which would have been exerted by the lire of the Royal Fusiliers when formed and drawn up in line, still, the well-handled rifles of our men soon began to carry havoc into the dark-grey oblong mass of living beings which served them for their easy target. And though, seemingly, the front rank of the compact mass yearned to move forward, there M'as always occurring in the interior some sudden death or some trouble with a wounded man, which seemed not only to breed difficulty in the way of an advance, but also to make the column here and there begin to look spotted and faulty. The distance was such as to allow of a good deal of shooting at particular men. Once Yea himself found that he was singled out to be