Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/335

 THE 17TH OF OCTOBEK. 305 moveiueiit can scarce be descried, are all the while o h a P. slowly changing in place, as well as in form ; and ^^^^- from that cause, or that cause in part, it seems to result that, when once the thick cloud which ob- scures a man's vision has been peopled and armed by his fancy, the shapes which appear before hirn do not long continue at rest. They grow larger ; they move ; and the unreal creature of the brain which at first seemed like infantry halted is pre- sently a column advancing. With the Russians — a firm, robiist people — the imagination, though straying beyond the bounds of reality, was still guided in part by sound knowledge ; for the images men saw in the smoke were the images of what might well be. As in a quarter of the field at the Alma (where the onset of the English horse might fairly enough have been looked for), there had seemed to come on from behind the smoke a host of cavalry charging, so now when, as people be- lieved, the Allies would storm the defences, men easily fancied they saw — that they saw indeed many times over — the enemy's columns of infantry coming on to deliver the assault. The quality of the Eussian soldier being what I have said, these pictures of his imagination did not drive him at all into panic, but still they much governed his actions. Again, and again, those who manned guns so planted as to be of no service except against assailing infantry, worked as hard at their loading and firing as though the assault had be- gun, and many a blast of mitrail was sent tearing through phantom battalions. VOii. IV. U