Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/187

 THE APRIL BOMBARDMENT. 155 service of once more attempting an enterprise CHAP which only a few hours before had been aban- doned as hopeless ; but Captain Oldershaw him- self did not know that the selection had been made on such grounds. It was only, he thought, in conformity with what is called ' turn of duty ' that both he and the force he commanded were assigned to the work they went through on the 13th of April.* Yet if so, how superb must have been that old ' Eegiment ' of the Eoyal Artillery from which a blind choice by the 'roster' could 'tell off' the man and the men for fighting a little lone battery in the way we are going to see ! Long enough before sunrise to be under cover entering the of darkness, Captain Oldershaw moved down into the Work, having with him one subaltern (Lieu- tenant W. E. Simpson t), one surgeon, and as many as sixty-five gunners. Captain Oldershaw found time to visit the No. its state. VIII. battery, and discovered what we have seen to be the fact, that no guns had there been mounted. Without any support of the kind that that battery, if armed, might have given him, he saw that his own ' No. VII.' would have to fight out its own fight. There, four guns stood planted in battery, and a fifth one was near them, but lying on its subject was the right one, and to conjecture that both he and his men were specially selected for the work set before them. f Now Major-General Simpson.
 * I have reason to doubt whether Oldershaw's belief on this