Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/279

 THE MAIN FJGHT, 235 was expressive, it would seem, of a resolute pur- chap. pose, for the troops which this attack threatened ' were presently seen to waver, if not indeed to ^dPwiod give way, and our people then no longer firing, but setting their hearts on the bayonet, descended with impetuous haste to strike at the shaken mass. Colonel Henry Smyth, commanding the 68th men, had his horse shot under him, and Captain Wynne fell dead in the midst of this charge, being struck through the head by a mus- ket-ball, whilst leading forward his company and striving to keep it united ; but, if less than 400 in number, the English, extended in line and yet further disparted in moving by the roughness of the ground, had, by this time, spread out a great front, and already the huddled and clustered aggregate below was shrinking under this onset as from the cast of a net, and flying down the hillside. General Torrens, whilst striving to hold back his too impetuous soldiery, fell grievously wounded, and was lying on the ground disabled when Cathcart rode down and spoke to him, say- ing, ' Torrens, well and gallantly done ! ' * Our soldiers in their eagerness poured freely down the steeps, and were, some of them, presently mingled with those men of the Coldstream — the men vainly called back by Townshend Wilson — who had reached the meadows of the Tchernaya. Passing now from our right towards our left, we come next to Colonel Crofton's wing of the several months.
 * Torrens died from the wound, but after an interval of