Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/225

COLONEL YEA'S ATTACK. 195 still in the pride of attack, yet so closely ap- chap. preaching misfortune as almost to touch its brink. _ Any answer from him to the question of the piloting Engineer must needs have been either one owning his persistent attack to be hopeless, or else an answer enjoining some wild, frantic act of the kind that is rather sacrificial than warlike. Opportune, under such conditions, may have well been the shot which, before he could open his lips, laid on him the silence of death. Except as regards the storm column (from which clear duty compelled him to exact heavy sacrifice) Colonel Yea had been chary of the lives of his men ; for, though holding an extended authority, he did not direct that the bulk of the troops he commanded should come up — encoun- tering slaughter— in close support to the lesser body of men with which he acted in person. In that smaller body, however, as may well be sup- posed, the proportion of loss was huge. Irrespec- ami of other tive of the Engineers and the sailors, our infantry of men.'" 1 ' sharing with Yea in his onset against the Redan on its eastern or (proper) left flank lost no less than fourteen of their officers, and more than three-fifths of their strength ; * whilst there also unhappily fell a distressingly large proportion of the few Engineers and of the sixty seamen who 400 by the 34th Regiment, making together 500 bayonets with besides some soldiers acting as bearers, there fell 313 either wounded or killed.
 * Out of the 100 men furnished by the Rifle Brigade and the