Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/152

 108 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP. VI. 1»« Period. Fordyco engaged in the Mikriakoff Glen. Keeping up a brisk harmless fire which sent flights of balls far and high through the foliage of the stunted oaks, this battalion, though not yet in sight, still plainly disclosed its approach ; and Major Fordyce of the 47th (the officer who had been posted with some 300 men of his regiment * near the point of the Mikriakoff Spur) deployed his small force into line, pressed forward in the direction of the fire, and at length, when about eighty yards off — for the mist at this spot was not dense enough to prevent him — could see the head of the column descending from the opposite ridge. The combat which followed was not an affair of close fighting (like most of the Inkerman struggles) but a sample of the strife between column and line when engaged at a distance of some eighty or a hundred yards. Though already drawn out into line, the troops under Fordyce had become yet further extended whilst making their way through tall brushwood* and, notwithstanding the smallness of their com- parative numbers, they now showed a much broader front than the body advancing against them in column at quarter distance. The foremost of the Eussians made haste to be plying their muskets, but they did our people no of each on an average would be about 824. In speaking of the battalions of uny Russian regiment as the ' 1st,' '2d,' ' 3d,' or ' 4th,' I designate them according to their respective order in the battle, going from the proper right to the proper left, and do not thereby mean to indicate their actual army-list titles. strength of the whole regiment was 570.
 * Or less ; for he had with him only one wing, and the