Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/168

 124 TH1<: BATTLE OF INKEHMAN. CHAP. VI. L$l Period. The three Euglish guns in possession of the Russians. nearest of the advancing Kussians.* As though bewildered by the novelty of the challenge and the sudden necessity of having to encounter a horseman, these men for a moment stopped short in their onset ; and then there followed a con- flict of a singular kind between, on the one hand, a great weight of advancing infantry, and, on the other, a few score of artillerymen, finding vent for some part of their rage in curses and shouts of defiance, but wildly striving besides to beat back the throng from their beloved guns with swords, with rammers, with sponge-staves, nay even, one may say, with clenched fists — for the story of the mighty Clitheroe bruiser felling man after man with his blows, and then standing a while un- molested and seemingly admired by the enemy, is not altogether a fable. Of course a struggle like this was rather a fray than a combat ; and the columns at last, rolling on with irresistible weight, the enemy — at least for the time — was left in possession of Townsend's three foremost guns.^f Miller holds the Victoria Cross. + These evidently were the guns which the Russians (con- fused by the mist, and mistaking the Mikriakotl" Glen for the Careenage Ravine) sujijtosed they had taken from Codrington. — See Todleben, p. 460. General Codrington never for a mo- ment lost any guns, and, indeed, at this time he had no guns to lose.
 * 111 recognition of his service on this occasion, Colonel