Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/290

 268 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. CHAP, were threatened on their flank by a large number i. of Cossacks.* To avoid being cut off by those Cossacks, they inclined sharply towards their then left, but in vain, for the Cossacks closed upon them. They, however, fought their way through their assailants, and made good their retreat, passing up the valley obliquely towards the ground where Scarlett was posted. The rest of the first line, having broken straight into the battery, had either eugaged themselves in the task of spearing and cutting down the obsti- nate artillerymen, or else had pushed forward be- twixt the limbers and the tumbrils to assail the cavalry in rear of the guns. These men of the first line, however, were all broken up into small groups and knots, or else acting, each singly, as skirmishers, wen under One of these groups had in it some of those jenyns 1 : very few men of the 13th Light Dragoons who yet remained undisabled, and Captain Jenyns, then in command of the regiment, endeavoured to keep it together ; but the largest fraction of the first line men of 17th consisted of that part of the 17th Lancers, which, not having been engaged in Morris's charge, and not having yet pressed on against the enemy's cav- alry, was now combating with the Eussian artil- lerymen in the battery. Morris, himself, as we saw, having first been cut down, had fallen into the from tin' flank and were aMe to take prisoners as already de- 8criheil whilst the Lancers who charged under Morris were pass- ing on in pursuit.
 * These apparently were the Cossacks who had poured in