Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/421

 THE MAIN FIGHT. 377 CO uiuineut, the round-shot ciuiie upturning the chap. ground on ull sides of our gunners — came crash- 1__ ing tlirough the underwood and tossing branches '*'^«"° and roots into the air — came striking down men, and strilving down horses, and smashing artillery tumbrils; whilst — sometimes overhead, sometimes on the ground — the thirty- two-pounder shell would tear itself into fragments and send them crying for blood with their harsh, grating, trucul- ent ' scrisht ' — the most hated of all battle-sounds. By the fire thus raging against it from a numerous and powerful artillery. Colonel Collingwood Dick- son's small band of 150 men was at first some- what heavily stricken, and in one quarter of an hour there fell seventeen of their number — a pro- portion of more than one-tenth ; but, as often as any man dropped whilst working one of the guns, his place was eagerly taken by another. All were glowing with zeal, and exulting as only gunners can do in a sense of artillery power. Each of the guns was laid every time by an officer — one by Sinclair, the other by Harward — and visibly, every shot carried havoc into the enemy's batteries. Lord Eaglan (who had come to this spot and descended from his saddle) stood watch- ing the development of the new artillery force he had been able to bring into play, and admiring the ardour and the skill with which our men fought their two guns against all the ordnance strength on Shell Hill. To the eye of an English artilleryman engaged in this struggle the batteries he especially challenged were more or less on the