Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/158

 130 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, skull; and although he remained altogether un- ' conscious of the incident thus occurring to him- self, he found his attention attracted and even interested by an object which did not concern him. He saw a fair-haired Eussian lad of seven- teen, enwrapped like the rest in the coarse heavy over-coat which was common to officers and men ; and what seems to have interested him — for he looked with the eyes of a man who cares much for questions of race — was the powerlessness of a levelling costume to disguise the true breed, and the certainty with which, as he thought, he could detect gentle blood under the common grey cloth of a trooper. ' He looked,' says Colonel White, — ' he looked like an Eton boy.' The boy fought with great bravery ; but it was well if he had no mother, for before the fight ended he fell, his youthful head cloven in two. Though each man amongst the ' three hundred ' was guided, of course, in his path by the exigen- cies of the particular combats in which he en- gaged, and though many besides were so locked in the column from time to time as to be able to make little progress, yet, upon the whole, the tendency of the assailants was to work their way counter to the ranks of the enemy's squadrons, and by degrees both Greys and Mauley's squadron of Inniskillings pressed further and further in, till at length, it would seem, there were some who attained to the very rear of the column.* These from above than upon the distinct assertion of combatants who had penetrated thus far.
 * This rests rather upon the observation of men who gazed