Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/152

 L22 SUCCESSIVE ATTACKS BY THE ENEMY. I'll Al V. Whilst thus the men of our ' working-parties ' were striving to connect the Work of the 'Quarries' with the trenches of Gordon's Attack, and to effect such a lodgment, or inchoate lodg- ment as might afterwards enable fresh 'hands' to continue the task under daylight, their comrades in arms were sustaining with checkered fortunes a scries of obstinate fights. Boudist- cheff's attack. Contests In contests for field-works so placed that they maintained, _. , by infantry can be brought under lire by opposing batteries, between two .. . . opposite men oftentimes imd it more easy to wrest the batteries,. .111 coveted prize from their enemy s hands, than to hold it fast after the capture.* Our people were destined all night to be either under the lire of powerful batteries, or — at intervals — meeting the onslaught of troops intent on recapture. At the head of a powerful body of Itussian troops drawn from the Kamtchatka, the Volhynia, and the Minsk regiments, Captain Boudistcheff of the Imperial Navy strove hard to retake the counter-approaches ( 5 ) ; but was stubbornly met by the English in spite of their scanty numbers. Captain lioudistcheff the commander of the assail- ing force was wounded and taken prisoner by our people, and Khomenko the commander of the Kamtchatka battalion was killed. Still the English were forced back a good way by the weight of the assailing mass, and were even, it seems, for the moment driven out of the field- the Russians seemed to act on that conviction. Alterna- tions.
 * Wc saw, ante, vol. viii. pp. 207 ct seq., an instance in which