Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/157

 VERY WEAK YET VICTORIOUS. 127 freaks of the imagination which often mislead the en a p. best troops when attempting a night attack. It ! — may therefore be said that our people owed this, their definitive victory, to one of the chances of war. Still, if any one thinks for a moment of what we called the ' show of resistance ' — the appeal of the single bugler, the touching recourse to small pistols, the shouts (instead of a volley !) opposed to a column of infantry — he will say that, though Fortune took part in this the last of the conflicts repeated during the night, she at least (as is often her wont) ranged herself on the side of bold men — men who hardly, it seems, enter- tained any rational hope, yet — superbly deficient in logic — refused nevertheless to despair. Whilst thus happily achieving their tasks of Execution L L J ° meanwhile the more strictly combative sort, our people had of tll(also done more; for with only a few 'hands,' and works. — in general — working under strong fire they had connected the newly won field-work with Eger- ton's Pit by a fairly sufficient ' boyau,' and more- over had thrown up a parapet — consisting of gabions and barrels, but also in part of dead bodies — on the captured ground, thus providing such means as might render it possible to continue the work under daylight, and entitling themselves to hope that their seizure, and night-long defence of what our men called ' the Quarries ' would ripen into a conquest. "We spoke of men lying helpless because they had passed the limits of what human beings could do in the way of hard toil ; and it hap-