Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/392

 VI id /eriod. 348 THK BATTLE OF INICERMAN. CHAP, when Daubeney sprang at its flank with the thirty men he was leading ; and along with his people he not only wedged himself in between the 2d and 3d companies of the riven battalion, but tore his way on and on into the centre of the mass. There, at one time, the assailants and the assailed stood so closely locked together that their power to hurt one another was almost for some instants suspended, and with one Eussian officer thus pinioned by the weight of the crowd. Colonel Daubeney — then compressed in like manner himself — exchanged a smiling acknow- ledgment of the duress suffered by each. In the earlier moments of this audacious attack, the colour-sergeant Charles Walker — a man of great size and great strength — had wielded the butt-end of his rifle with prodigious effect ; and now when English and Eussians became so jammed up together that none could make use of their weapons, this huge colour-sergeant was still fiercely driving a rent through part of the close compressed crowd, doing this more or less by the power of his mighty shoulders and arms, but also by dint of the blows he laid in right and left with his fist, and the war he maintained with his feet against the enemy's ankles and shins.* Our men held to their leader's design. Some were of the (iiiard. Sjieaking of his exploits in this charge, Sir Charles Daubeney writes : — ' He used the butt of his rifle with
 * Colour-sergeant Charles Walkei* is now one of the Yeomen
 * prodigious effect until we got jammed up, and then with fists
 * and by dint of pushing and kicking assisted me and those
 * with me most materially in our passage through.'