Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/320

 276 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP, each of them fighting aggressively in the midst L_ of the Kussians, and even, it is said, gaining 8d Period, ground. Engulfing those foremost assailants, and now laying its weight on the tormentors who still obstructed its front, the column at length re- covered its powers of movement, and began to draw forward once more. Then, however, its troops all at once undertook to deploy ; and the evolution had begun, when Burnaby, happening to slip upon the wet barrel of a musket, fell to the ground ; and the Eussians passing on over him, it presently resulted that he and the re- mains of his men — namely, Bancroft, Archer, William Turner, John Pullen, Edward Hill, and Joseph Troy, with besides a few more then living but afterwards slain — were in the wake of the enemy's advancing battalions, or, in other words, upon the Russian side of the column with which they had fought ; but besides that Bancroft, Archer, and Turner were all three of them wounded, and the Captain himself lying pro- strate, John Pullen, though afterwards rescued, stood surrounded at this moment by Eussians, and was for some time held prisoner. On the other hand, three, if not more, of the English survivors, namely, Hill, and Troy, and James Archer — in spite of his wound — were yet upstanding in arms, and still ready, as they presently showed, to en- gage in fresh personal conflicts. Cast thus by the chances of war into the wake of the enemy's advancing battalions, our people perforce became witnesses of the tilings lie there