Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/360

 33 t THE HALT ON THI- CHAP, three da3-s, and to tho utinnst of their bodily . 1__ strength, Dr Thompson and his servant laboured to part the dead from the living, to heave the corpses away, and get them more or less under- ground ; but ^ hen, at last, succour came, our seamen had to lil't out as many as thirty-nine bodies — some, in part, decomposed — before they could get at the living.* "When at length, on the morning of the 2Gth, Captain Lushington of the Albion came up from the shore, and discovered his two fellow-country- men at their dismal post of duty, he was filled with admiration of their fortitude, and with sympathy for what they had endured. t All that day, and for five or six hours more on the following morning, the seamen of the Albion and tho Vesuvius, being well provided with stretchers, laboured hard, and with cheerful alacrity, at the business of cariying the sufferers on board ship ; and there only remained about fifty of the wounded still lying on the ground, wdien the appearance of a Russian infantry force, which was judged to be three thousand strong, obliged Captain Lushington to give up the rest of his ta.sk. :^ + Ibid. Captain Lushington wa.s despatclied on thi.s duty in hi.s ship, the Albion, towed by the Vesuvius, and liaving the Avon transport in company. + Ibid. The arrangements made by Captain Lushington f(«r covcaing the working parties who carried the wounded, and for etTecting the orderly retreat of his marines and small-arms men, seem to have been very able and neatly timed.
 * Lushington to Dundas, 27th September 1854.