Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/160

 138 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, back with his men Colonel Darby Griffith received L_ a pistol-shot wound in the head which stunned, and for some time disabled him. The back current thus formed by the Greys was in reality an actual continuation of their attack, but still, in the literal sense of the term, it was of course a retrograde movement; and to- wards the proper left of the column where Man- ley's squadron of the Inniskillings was fighting, men could more or less see the direction in which the Greys moved, without perceiving the circum- stances which governed their course. The sight of a number of the Greys with their horses' heads towards the rear was not the only cause which now tended to overcast hope. The great Eussian column was proving that, notwithstanding the mismanagement which had exposed it whilst halted to the almost insulting attack of three squadrons, it still was of too firm a quality to be all at once disintegrated and brought to ruin by the incursion of the small groups of the redcoats who were riving it in oppo- site directions ; and there seemed to be ground for believing that in this conflict of three hundred against a column numbered by thousands, mere time might govern the issue by lessening every minute the relative power of the few. At this junc- ture also the huge, and dense Eussian mass began to enforce a sense of the power that 1 here is, after all, in the mere weight of numbers ; for — without by this movement appearing to disclose any weak- ness — the column now swayed to and fro, and