Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/217

 VI. 2d Period THE MAIN FIGHT. 173 to excuse liiniself by saying tluit to keep clear of CHAP, round-shot and shell would have been to avoid the battle. Lord Kaglan's happy calm in action was a quality which imparted itself to others. If a spy sent forward by Dannenberg had, by some clever artifice, penetrated to the part of Home Eidge where Lord Eaglan sat in his saddle, he might have observed the English Commander conversing with Airey or Strangways ; but, if speaking the truth, he must have reported that — in spite of an unforeseen onslaught which had burst, as it were, on Mount Tnkerman with the might of 40,000 men — he had failed to detect in the Headquarter Staff any sign of discomposure, and perhaps might have had to confess that he had both gazed and listened for minutes and minutes together without, after all, learning any- thing, except, perhaps, some such fact as that the English mail had come in, and that the chiefs right-hand man could find time to be deliver- ing to this friend or that a welcome letter from home.* Under conditions like those of Inkerman it would be hard to overrate the advantage de- rived from the visible presence of a chief un- affectedly calm, and this quiet air of routine in all the people about him. The period of the first morning fight was divided from that of the next one by a deep mark of severance, which is perceived, of course, at the instant by those who have learnt that the the battle, an officer of the Staff delivered a letter from England.
 * To Colonel Dickson, for instance, and at a critical ])eriod of