Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/371

 FIELD OF THE ALMA. 345 ho emplo}ed all liis boats, and no less than a CHAP. thousand of his seamen* Every soldier prostrate with wounds or sickness was a difticult load, which had to be carried by the strength of men for the distance of three or four miles ; but the sailors toiled, and toiled with a generous, exuberant zeal which left them no rest till the work was achieved. Deep, indeed, as Lord Eaglan declared, was his 'feeling of gratitude' to the sailors fur these kindly services ; and he owned that he had been singularly touched by observing the devotion with which naval officers took part in the bodily labour of lifting and carrying the wounded soldiers.+ Of the whole number of wounded English, amounting, as we saw, in number to more than sixteen bundled, a large proportion were so stricken as to be helpless ; but besides, there were the sufferers who lay upon the ground cast down and disabled by mortal sickness, and of these there were very many; for — baffling the hopes which medical science had tried, one may say, to harbour — the cholera had proved to be a pestil- ence which was not to be warded off by the stir and glory of battle.| + Lord Eaglan to Duke of Newcastle. his captain of the forecastle, were but two out of the number of those seamen who genenaisly busied themselves in the kindly duties which they felt to be imposed upon them by the pain- ful scenes of the battle-field ; but they alone took out from the tents (and buried as well as they could) the corpses of twenty- eight men who had died of cholera during the night. — Letter from Admiral Dacres, 19th October ISfiJJ. in.
 * Adniii-al DuiiJas to Admiralty, 27th OctoLer 1854.
 * Captain Dacres, the connnander of the Sanspavell, and