Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/221

 THE MAIN FIGHT. 177 derstand its worthlessness, but — upon successive chap. VI bodies of men. ' When at length the 4000 drew close, and began '^'^^^^o*- The fiKlit their attack, Adams drove in their skirmishers, maintained by Adams overthrew the company columns of the Okhotsk towards lua regiment, and worsted, or at all events checked, its two supporting battalions ; but, the Sapper battalion coming up to the rescue with great de- termination, the English were in their turn pressed back a little, and thenceforth for a while the fight heavily swayed to and fro. The Okhotsk and the Sapper battalions were perhaps of harder material than their comrades of the 10th and 17th Divi- sions ; or it may be they fought more tenaciously, because the now clearer state of the atmosphere allowed them to obtain and enjoy a full conscious- ness of their great ascendant in numbers. At all events the discomfiture of the troops constituting their front was not followed, as had happened in the earlier morning, by a disruption of the columns charged to act in support. Numbers fell under the coolly delivered fire of the English line ; but, this time, the disabled or discomfited soldiery in front were continually replaced by men thrown forward from the masses behind. The hundreds at first held their ground against The flani attacks : the thousands, but they soon felt the stress of that leverage which the enemy could apply by getting round their flanks. Whether the lakoutsk and the Selinghinsk battalions had yet so closely ap- proached as to be able to take part in these flank attacks, or whether — as indeed was easy enough VOL. VI. M