Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/201

 1st Period THE MAIiN- FIGHT. 157 Turner, Bellairs, Mauleverer, Adams — all these, chap VI one after another, found occasions for the separate L. exercise of power, and used them with signal effect; yet excepting Buller and Adams (both Brigadier-Generals) no one of them came into action with any extended authority such as that which circumstance gave him. It seems hardly unsafe to conjecture that a number of men thus raised up into leaderships by the almost blind chances of battle, yet proving, every one of them, equal to the varying and successive emergencies, were, after all, only fair samples of the body from which they came, and that, as regards both its officers and the soldiery under them, our army at lukerman was rich in men able to cope with that kind of emergency which can best be met by sheer fighting. The English came into action without having The En-iish broken their fast ; and before the close of the fasting. battle, there must have been many whose bodily strength was a little impaired by want of food and drink ; but the main need felt by our troops was one of a more formidable kind. The cen- Wunt of am iiiuiiition. trifugal force exerted by Penneiathers peculiar tactics carried with it of necessity a rapid expen- diture of cartridges, and this, too, by troops so far in advance, so dispersed in the copsewood, and, besides, so shrouded in mist that, as long as they remained fighting thus in the extreme front, they were necessarily beyond the reach of all measures for enabling them to replfMiisli their pouches. Already, as we have seen, numbers of