Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/145

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 1 23 masses around them ; but the more the inter- c ha p fusion increased, the greater became the seeming 1_. oppressiveness of the disproportion between the few and the many ; and soon this effect so in- creased, that if a man gazed from the heights of the Chersonese without the aid of a field-glass, he could hardly ward off a belief that the hundreds had been swamped in the thousands. Yet all this while General Scarlett and the ' three hundred ' horsemen who had followed him into the column were not in such desperate condi- tion as to be helplessly perishing in this thicket of lances and swords. If, indeed, they had faltered and hovered with uncertain step in the front of the great Kussian column till it might please General Ryjoff to sound ' the trot,' they must have been crushed or dispersed by the descending weight of his masses ; but our horsemen by first charg- ing home and then forcing their way into the heart of the column, had gained for themselves a strange kind of safety (or rather of comparative safety), in the very density of the squadrons which encompassed them. It is true that every man had to fight for his life, and that too with an industry which must not be suffered to flag ; but still he fought under conditions which were not so overwhelmingly unfair as they seemed to be at first sight. Scarlett's men, as we know, were 'heavy dragoons,' whilst the Russians were either hus- sars or troops of other denominations, ranging