Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/230

 208 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, as I learn, by men held to be of authority in such matters, that after the utterance by Nolan oi his last taunting words, Lieutenant- General Lord Lucan should have put the Captain under arrest. The course least susceptible of a rational defence was that of treating Captain Nolan's indignant apostrophe as a word of command from Head- quarters, and regarding the scornful gesture which accompanied his words as a really topographical indication. Lord This last course, however, as I understand him, determina- is the one which Lord Lucan took ; for, as soon as he had heard the taunting words, and marked the insulting gesture, he determined to govern his action, not exclusively by the written instructions which he held in his hand, but in part by the angry and apparently rhetorical apostrophe of the excited Captain. Nay, in spite of the two written orders, one pointing to the ' heights,' and the other to the ' guns ' on those heights, as the object of the enterprise, he determined to follow what he judged to be the direction of Nolan's out-pointed arm as a guiding indication of the quarter in which the attack should be made. Dividing the Causeway Heights (where Lord Raglan desired to attack) from the line of the Fedioukine Hills (where D'AUonville was des- tined to charge), there opened, as we saw, that North Valley where riders seeking their death — without themselves being able to strike in attack or defence for the first full mile of their road — might nevertheless run the gauntlet between two