Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/241

 THE MAIN FIGHT. 197 and valiantly iiuiiutaiiied l)y the Guards should chap. end, after all, in discomfiture for want of a little ' support. ^^^'^'^■ To get this support for his troops, he pressed succours drawn froDi hard on the slender resources which our people tiio2d . Division: retained at the Isthmus, and even, indeed, drew some men from that unwearied 2d Division which (with only such help as we saw) had not only fought and won the great fight of the earlier morning, but was now — in scant num- bers — defending the very core of the English position. Pennefather, as we saw, had been retaining no more than a few hundred of his organised infan- try on that vital ground — the Home Kidge — which constituted the last bulwark of the English on Mount Inkeriiiaii, — nay even, as he himself thought, their last bulwark in all the Crimea ; but the man was so fearless, so free from all lurking desire to keep the troops to himself, and still so enamoured of the idea which impelled him to seek combats in front instead of awaiting them upon the strong ground behind, that, weak as he was in numbers, he now parted with the half of his substance. He suffered one wing of the Kifie battalion which Cathcart had placed at his disposal, and also one wing of the 95th, to be laid hold of for the purposes of the fight on the Kitspur ; and when, also (as we shall afterwards see), he had despatched to the Barrier the other wing of the Rifle battalion, and the other wing of the 95th, the force of organised infantry which