The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood Part 28

Only here and there the energetic action of a few shrewd officers did something to mend the mischief.

Thus the Royal Picts benefited by the astute prompt.i.tude of long-headed Sergeant Hyde. He was acting as quartermaster, and as such had been left behind in camp, although sorely against his will, when the rest of the regiment went out to fight. But he had heard the long, well-sustained roll of musketry-fire, and it satisfied one not new to war that a very close contest had begun.

"They'll soon fire away their cartridges at this rate," he said to himself. "If I could only get the ammunition-reserves up to them! I'll do it." And on his own responsibility he laid hands on all the beasts in camp: spare chargers, officers' ponies, and other animals, and quickly loaded them with the cartridge-boxes. Then, leading the cavalcade, he hurried to the front, asking as he went for the Royal Picts.

He found his regiment in the Sandbag Battery, and they received him, so soon as his errand was known, with a wild cheer.

"Excellently done!" cried Colonel Blythe. "You have a good head on your shoulders, Hyde: ammunition was the one thing we needed."

"Yes," shouted a brawny soldier, "we were just killed for want of cartridges."

"And want of food," grumbled another; "sorra bite nor sup since yesterday."

"Sergeant darling," said a third, "won't you sound the breakfast-bugle? Fighting on an empty stomach is but a poor pastime."

Thus, in the interval between two combats, but always under a galling and destructive fire, they joked and bandied words with a freedom that discipline would not have tolerated at any other time.

"I think, colonel, I could bring up the rations: biscuits and cold pork, anyhow," suggested Hyde.

"And the grog-tub: don't forget that, sergeant" cried a fresh voice.

"By all means, Hyde, get us what you can," replied Blythe; "the men are all fasting, and some sort of a meal would be very good for them, only you must keep a sharp look-out for us. We may not be still here when you return."

This Sandbag Battery, which for the moment the Royal Picts still held, was the object of ceaseless contention that day. Although at best but an empty prize, useful to neither side, because its parapet was too high to be fired over, the battery was lost and won, captured and recaptured, constantly during the battle.

Even now the Russians, regaining heart, had made it the first aim of their fresh attack.

General Dannenberg, who was now in chief command, had a twofold object: he was resolved to press the centre of the English position and at the same time vigorously attack the right, throwing all his weight first upon the Sandbag Battery.

The small force under General Wilders, which included the Royal Picts, soon began to feel the stress of this renewed onslaught.

"They are coming on again and in great numbers, sir," said McKay to his general.

"I see, and menacing both our flanks. We shall be surrounded and swallowed up if we don't take care."

"Some support ought to be near by this time, sir," replied McKay.

"Ride back, and see. I don't want to be outflanked."

McKay retired and presently came upon two battalions of Guards, Grenadiers and Fusiliers, advancing under the command of the Duke of Cambridge.

"General Wilders, sir, is very hard pressed in the Sandbag Battery,"

said McKay, briefly.

"I'll march at once to his aid," replied the duke, promptly.

"Sir George Cathcart and part of the Fourth Division are coming up, and not far off," added one of the staff; "we won't wait for any one.

Ride on ahead, sir,"--this was to McKay,--"and let your general know he is about to be supported by her Majesty's Guards."

CHAPTER XVII.

A COSTLY VICTORY.

Now followed one of the fiercest and bloodiest episodes of the day.

Wilders had made the best show with his little band and clung tenaciously to the battery yet. The Russians came on and on, with stubborn insistence, and all along the line a hand-to-hand fight ensued. Numbers told at length, and the small garrison was slowly forced back, after enduring serious loss.

It was in this retreat that General Wilders received a dangerous wound: a fragment of a sh.e.l.l tore away the left leg below the knee.

"Will some one kindly lift me from my horse?" he said quietly, schooling his face to continue calm, in spite of the agony he endured.

McKay was on the ground in an instant and by his general's side.

"Don't mind me, my boy" said the general. "Leave me with the doctors."

"On no account, sir; I should not think of it." "Yes, yes. They want every man. Attach yourself to Blythe; he will command the brigade now.

Do not stay with me: I insist."

McKay yielded to the general's entreaties, but first saw the wounded man bestowed in a litter and carried to the rear.

Then he joined Colonel Blythe.

But now fortune smiled again. Our artillery had stayed the Russian advance; and the Grenadier Guards, followed by the Fusiliers, once more regained the coveted but worthless stronghold.

They could not hold it permanently, however: the tide of battle ebbed and flowed across it, and the victory leant alternately to either side. The Guards fought like giants, outnumbered but never outmatched, wielding their weapons with murderous prowess, and, when iron missiles failed them, hurling rocks--t.i.tan-like--at their foes.

Even when won this Sandbag Battery was a perilous prize: tempting the English leaders to adventure too far to the front and to leave a great gap in the general line of defence unoccupied and undefended.

Lord Raglan saw the error and would have skilfully averted the impending evil.

"That opening leaves the left of the Guards exposed," he said to Airey. "Tell Cathcart to fill it."

"You are to move to the left and support the Guards," was the message conveyed to Cathcart, "but not to descend or leave the plateau. Those are Lord Raglan's orders."

But Sir George chose to interpret them his own way, and already--with Torrens's brigade and a weak body at best--he had gone down the hill to join the Guards. In the sharp but misdirected encounter which followed, the general lost his life, and his force, with the Guards, were for a time cut off from their friends.

A Russian column had wedged in at the gap and for a time forbade retreat, but it was at length sheered off by the first of the French reinforcements; and the intercepted British, in greatly diminished numbers, by degrees won their way home.

This fighting around the Sandbag Battery had cost us very dear: Cathcart was killed, the Guards were decimated, and Wilders's brigade, now commanded by Colonel Blythe, had fallen back, spent and disorganised. So serious indeed were these losses that for the next hour the brigade possessed no coherent shape, and only by dint of the unwearied exertions of its officers was it rallied sufficiently to share in the later phases of the fight.

Meanwhile the centre of our line, where Pennefather stood posted on the Home Ridge, had been furiously a.s.sailed. Gathering their forces under shelter of a deep ravine, the Russian general sent up column after column, first against the left and then against the right of the Ridge. Gravely weakened by his early encounter, Pennefather had only a handful of his own men to meet this attack. They were now pressed back indeed, although their general was beginning to wield detachments from other commands. A portion of the Fourth Division had been put under his orders.

General Cathcart, just before his death, had come to him with a battalion of the Rifle Brigade.

"They can do anything," he had said. "Where are they wanted most?"