Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/179

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 157 ficfht ffoin^ on was calculated to overlay other chap. sounds, and the thick, stiff elastic herbage which : — clothed the soil, was well enough fitted to muffle to the utmost the tramp of horses ; but even after giving full weight to these circumstances, it is scarce possible to hear of what happened without more or less of astonishment. The troops of the Eussian left wing had not only continued their in-wheeling movement, but had carried the manoeuvre so far that, at the mo- ment of the impact, they had their backs turned towards the squadron which charged them. Pierc- ing their line like an arrow, Captain Hunt shot through it, and was followed in the next instant by the squadron behind him, which came crashing on upon the rear of the wheeling horsemen, con- signing some to slaughter, and driving in the rest of them, a helpless, unresisting throng, upon the front of the column. So swift and so weighty had been the charge that, if so one may say, it welded men into a mass. Of the tightness with which horsemen were locked in the melley, some idea may be formed if I say that, when Conolly found his arms laden and weighed down by the dead body of a Eussian trooper which had fallen across them, he was for some time prevented from casting off his unwelcome burthen by the density and close pressure of the throng which encompass- ed him on all sides. But although in this melley, a horseman, of his own will, could not alter his relative place, yet that throng, of which he had come to be for the moment an almost passive