Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/338

 VI id Period. 294 TlllO HATTLK OF INKHKMAN. CHAP, and tormeuted and grievously checked, if not in- deed finally baffled. In the tumult, he was all joy or all anger; but whether in joy, or whether in anger, his bearing disclosed sense of power. Nay, despite all the tens of the thousands that were challenging his reign on Mount Inkerman, lie had even an air of ownership. With the command of the 2d Division, he had received, as it were, a dominion co- extensive with the range of its pick- ets. The camp was his ; the ground was his — he knew it every foot — and, because of the hordes of trespassers, he was not the less in his seigniory. When his horse was shot under him, and he had to struggle some moments before he could extricate himself from its overthrown trunk, the emotion he disclosed was sheer rage, as though the enemy's gunners who had dared to go and kill his first charger were guilty of some lawless outrage for which they must speedily suffer, and in the mean time be damned. As from the first he had ac- cepted, so now he still held the theory which in- deed had been conceded to him by Lord Eaglan as well as by Canrobert, and understood that, the ground being his, he therefore had charge of the fight. With magnanimous imprudence he had allowed the troops to fly ofl" to the Kitspur on an enterprise wluch was of no moment at all as com- pared with the vital object of defending Home Eidge, and now it was for him — for him with what men he had left, but still for him, before all — to clear his domain of invaders. The hot, merry, riotous blood that flowed in his veins may