Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/297

 THE MAIN FIGHT. 263 the ships, our soldiers moved thus, one may say, chap. between two Eussiau army - corps ; for, whilst • some of them were a mark for Prince Gortscha- 2d Period koff's batteries, and even drew fire from his in- fantry collected on the bank of the river, there were others within a few paces of General Dan- nenberg's columns. Sir Charles Russell, for in- stance, and the soldiery with him, scraped past the interposed lakoutsk battalion by moving so close under it as to get shelter from the abrupt- ness of the ground. For those who had not the fortune to strike into Percy's bridle-path, a route which lay through dense copsewood across the abrupt steeps of the hillside was necessarily hard for the soldiery to traverse, and some of them dropped from exhaus- tion ; but nearly all, sooner or later, made good their way back to the Isthmus ; and, upon the whole, it may be said that the mischief these troops inflicted upon themselves by winning their false victory was not, after all, greatly aggravated by the interposition of the enemy on their vacated heights. Colonel Percy with his Grenadiers — he and Percy's . return froa they yearning fiercely after cartridges — was the fight, amongst the first to come in. Seeing at length a staff officer, and eagerly asking where his people could obtain fresh supplies of ammu- nition, he was answered, he says, with * Ton honour, don't know,' unaccompanied by any oflfer to meet the exigency by riding off to make in- quiry ; but the man thus disclosing his useless-