Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/251

 THE MAIN FIGHT. 207 aelf having met with two wounds, was for some chap. VI time disabled by one of them, but before the moment now reached he had recovered his 2'*-^"^''- Lis two first powers of action. If refusing to harbour despair, wounds: he at least confessed to himself that lie would willingly know of some basis on which liope might rest ; and seeking to learn how the few in their strife with the many could best derive an advantage from their hold of the Sandbag Battery, ins visit he now, for the first time, entered the work. Once sandbag ' Battery. within it, he saw that any troops planted there behind a tall parapet without the resource of a banquette must of necessity be M'asting their power, and then he understood why it was that the Grenadiers wlien they held the work had chosen to abandon its shelter. The Russians, however, in general did not know that the w^ork had this fatal defect ; and still believing (as our people had done before them) that it was an essential part of the English defences well worthy of their most valiant efforts, they came on in their strength, and, this time, with firm resolve. Whilst the Okhotsk battalions still continued Seimgbwisk troops on to move up m gross numbers against the left the top . . uf the shoulder of the work, the Selinghinsk troops paiapet. made a rusli at its face, and numbers of them having climbed up to the top of the parapet, began to fire down almost vertically u])on those of our soldiery who stood gathered along its base. The commander of the Scots Fusiliers was now coionei suddenly stript of the power which we saw him udrd*"^** exerting victoriously in one combat after another