Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/286

 242 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP. VI. 2d Period. Personal combats. Three Eussians acting together attacked Edward Hill, but Hill's life was saveJ by Isaac Archer, who ran his bayonet through one of the assailants. Kichard Wilkins, when shot through the bearskin by one of two Russians attacking him at the same time, sent a ritie-ball into the breast of the man who had thus barely missed him, drove off the other assailant with the point of the bayonet, and then re-loaded so quickly as to be able to shoot the man running. Private Wilson, attacked by two Russians, and trying to run one of them through, chanced to stumble and fall ; but Joseph Troy coming up bayoneted one of Wilson's foes, and Isaac Archer killed the other. William Overson, attacked by two Russians, killed one of them, and, it seems, drove the other away. Ser- geant Minor, confronted by five or six Russians, ran one of these through the side ; and another of them (who had that moment driven his steel through Minor's greatcoat) being pierced in the neck and killed by a bayonet-thrust from George Bates, the two English made good their ascendant, and were not, it seems, further molested by the rest of Minor's assailants.* Our people had learnt, or were learning, that the safest and best way of fighting was to deliver their thrust at the face or the neck, because it often proved difficult careful and minute statement on the above subject. The Russians, he said, were fine men, but owing to the difference in the handling of the bayonets, as stated in the text, had ' no ' chance' against our Guardsmen in separate personal conflicts. killed, but not, it is believed in this encounter.
 * .'^ergeant Minor, it is true, was wounded, and George Bates