Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/402

 380 COMBAT OF THE 26TH OF OCTOBER. CHAP. II. Progress of the combat in the Careenage Ravine. Continua- tion of the enemy's efforts on Mount Inkerman. Federoff's foremost combatants on Mount Inker- man, and may therefore be said to have accom- plished successfully the early part of its task; but the leader, as may well be imagined, now sought to do more, and for his next step, to over- throw the sixty men of the Guards confronting him from behind their trench. He exerted him- self with a valour and energy much admired by our people, making vehement and repeated efforts to draw forward his men ; but he every time failed to get a following, for Goodlake's men, with their venturesome chief now restored to them, showed no signs of yielding ; and for some time the antagonist forces — the throng of Kussians on one side, and the sixty men of the Guards on the other — remained thus standing at bay. Desist- ing after a lengthened combat from their endeav- ours to dislodge Goodlake's men, the Eussians submitted to stand debarred from any further ad- vance ; but they clung to the part of the ravine they had been able to reach, some entering the magazine grotto, where they found abundance of food, others planting themselves in the brush- wood, and behind jutting pieces of rock* We left Evans suffering his pickets to be slowly pressed back ; and Champion was already under the coercion of a fresh turning movement direct- ed against his left when he received a message announcing that a mass of Eussians might be Lancaster battery had been stored, but it was also used by the ineu of the neighbouring picket as a place for cooking and eating.
 * The magazine grotto was a cavern in which the powder for the