their faces to get out of this horrible hell, poor Charles gave a short, sharp scream, and bent down in his saddle over his horse's neck. It was nothing. It was only as if one were to have The pain was over in 5 The pain twenty teeth pulled out at once. What a fool he was to cry out. an instant. was gone again, and they were still under fire, and Hornby was before him. How long? How many minutes, how many hours? His left arm was nearly dead, but he could hold his reins 10 in a way, and rode hard after Hornby, from some wild instinct. The pain had stopped, but was coming on again as if ten thousand red-hot pincers were pulling at his flesh, and twenty thousand were arriving each moment to help them. His own friends were beside him again, and there was a rally and a charge. At what? he thought for an instant. At guns? No. At men this time, Russian hussars,He saw Hornby in the thick right valiant fellows, too. of the melée, with his sword flickering about his head like 20 lightning. He could do but little himself; he rode at a Russian and unhorsed him; he remembers seeing the man go down, though whether he struck at him, or whether he went down by the mere superior weight of his horse, he can not say. This I can say, though, that whatever 25 he did, he did his duty as a valiant gentleman; I will vouch for that much. They beat them back, and then turned. turned again and beat them back once more. they turned and rode. For it was time. And then Charles lost 30 15 5 sight of Hornby till the last, when some one caught his rein and turned his horse, and then he saw that they were getting into order again, and that Hornby was before him, reeling in his saddle. As the noise of the battle grew fainter behind them, he looked round to see who was riding beside him, and holding him by the right arm. It was the little cornet. Charles wondered why he did so. "You're hard hit, Simpson," said the cornet. "Never mind. Keep your 10 saddle a little longer. We shall be all right directly.” His faculties were perfectly acute, and having thanked the cornet, he looked down and noticed that he was riding between him and a trooper, that his left arm was hanging numbed by his side, and that the trooper was guiding his 15 horse. He saw that they had saved him, and even in his deadly agony he was so far his own old courteous self, that he turned right and left to them and thanked them for what they had done for him. Soon they were among English faces, and English 20 cheers rang out in welcome to their return. Oh, but the sabers bit deep that autumn afternoon. There were women in Minsk, in Moglef, in Tchernigof, in Jitemer, in Polimva, whose husbands were Hussars and women in Taganrog, in Tcherkask, in Sanepta, which 25 lies under the pleasant slate mountains, whose husbands and sons were Cossacks - who were made widows that day. For that day's work there was weeping in the reedthatched hovels of the Don, and in the mud-built shanties of the Dnieper. For the 17th Lancers, the Scots Greys, 30 the 1st Royals, and the 6th Enniskillens "those terrible beef-fed islanders" were upon them; and Volhynia and Hampshire, Renfrewshire and Grodno, Podolia and Fermanagh, were mixed together in one common ruin. Still, they say, the Princess Petrovitch, on certain days, leaves her carriage, and walks a mile through the snow 5 barefoot, into Alexandroski, in memory of her light-haired, handsome young son, whom Hornby slew at Balaclava. And I myself know the place where Lady Allerton makes her pilgrimage for those two merry boys of hers who lie out on the Crimean hill. Alas! not side by side. 10 Karlin Karlinoff was herding strange-looking goats on the Suratow hillside, which looks towards the melancholy Volga on one side, and the reedy Ural on the other, when the Pulk came back, and her son was not with them. Eliza Jones had got on her husband's smock frock, and 15 was a setting of beans, when the rector's wife came struggling over the heavy lands and water furrows, and broke the news gently, and with many tears. Karlin Karlinoff drove her goats into the mud-walled yard that night, though the bittern in the melancholy fen may have been 20 startled from his reeds by a cry more wild and doleful than his own; and Eliza Jones went on setting her beans, though they were watered with her tears. The extreme What a strange, wild business it was. east of Europe against the extreme west. Men without a 25 word, an idea, a habit, or a hope in common, thrown sudof war denly together, to fight and slay; and then to part, having learned to respect one another better in one year than ever they had in a hundred years of peace. - From "Ravenshoe," by Henry Kingsley. Flashed all their sabers bare, All the world wondered: Cossack and Russian Reeled from the saber stroke, Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered; They that had fought so well Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade! Honor the charge they made! Noble six hundred! Alfred Tennyson. |