Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/294

 250 TIII<: BATTJ.K OV INKKRMAN. CHAP. VI. id Period. West ward direction taken hy a few. Course t^ken bv the bulk. The higli ground almost denuded. The newly approachinj: battalions seen by Percy. His measures. Tluue were some of our people, as, for instance, the men with Bellairs, and, besides these, a few of the Guards, who in striving against assailants on their left flank had been gradually drawn from the Kitspur to ground further west. These will be seen by-and-by rea])pearing on the line of the Post-road ; but the bulk of the English forces successively brought to the Kitspur were now tearing down in pursuit towards the valley of the Tchernaya, and it is plain that our troops could not thus rush down from the heights and disperse in the jungle below without forfeiting — at least for a time — their power of further swaying the action. Except the hundred men whom the Duke of Cambridge had held back with the colours of the Grenadier Guards, there was hardly now left on the higher slo})es of the Kitspur so much as even a remnant of the 2600 English who at one time or other had combated in this part of the field. In chasing the eneni}^ down from the higher slopes of the Kitspur, Colonel Percy had been so drawn towards his left that he found himself soon on the crest overhanging St Clement's Gorge; and on looking to its opposite bank, he there saw Russian columns descending, with an evi- dent intention to cross the chasm, advance up the side of the Kitspur, and attack our people in flank. The troops he descried were those two Okhotsk battalions which had been temporarily withdrawn from the front before the general overthrow sustained by their comrades on the