Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/157

 THE BATTLE OE BALACLAVA. 135 Of course, the incursion of the Brigadier and c B a P. the three horsemen with him had more of the character of a * forlorn hope ' than could belong to the enterprise of the squadrons which followed him into the column ; but, upon the whole, these com- bats of Scarlett's and his aide-de-camp were more or less samples of that war of the one against several which each of the ' three hundred ' waged. This close bodily fighting put so great and so ceaseless a strain upon the attention and the bodily power of the combatants, that, with some, it suspended to an extraordinary degree all care about self. Thus Clarke, for example, who had led on his squadron bare-headed, was so deeply cut on the skull by the edge of a sabre as to be startling to the eyes of others by the copious channel of blood which coursed down his head and neck ; yet he himself, all the while, did not know he had received any wound. And along with this ennobling interruption of man's usual care after self, there was often a fanciful wayward- ness in his choice of the objects to which he in- clined attention. Colonel Dalrymple White, for example, after riding alone, as we saw, into an untouched part of the column at the head of his second squadron, had received such a heavy sabre- cut on his helmet as cleaved down home to the compels people placed in authority to enforce its rules for the repression of excellence hy official inversions of fact. It may he worth while to add that Elliot could not be named for the Victoria Cross because what he did was no more, after all, than his duty. See in the Appendix papers relative to the exclusion of Elliot's name. I.