Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/368

 324 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP, providing for the removal of a gun and a howitzer ^^' which had become clogged, and remained drawing Ed Period, fiy-e ypQij this part of the crest without being in a state to return it. The remnant of Warren's regiment drawn up, as we saw, on his right, was as little suspicious as its colonel of any closely impending attack, when there all at once fell on the ear an undefined foreign sound as of multitudinous life, and then suddenly on the top of the Eidge, there rose up before the eyes of our men a strong Eussian column which instantly came closing in upon the front of this 55th line, and at the same time flooding on past its right flank. At some spots, the enemy when first recognised was within five yards ; at others even nearer, and indeed quite close. Taken thus by surprise, and hearing too at almost the same moment — for so by sheer chance it occurred — that the buglers of the 57th on their left were beginning to sound the 'retreat,' the hundred men of the 55th were some of them enveloped and made prisoners and the rest driven back several paces, leaving all that part of the crestwork which had been in their charge to be held or overswept by the enemy. The Enssians however then found that they were under fire from their own batteries, and this discovery so embar- rassed them, that they hastily marched off their prisoners without taking from them their arms.* • Those prisoners afterwards attnckcd their guards, and such of them as were not struck (l<nvn in the fray recovered their lib<rty.