Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/131

BATTLE OF Till': ALMA. 105 have, at the least, a forward place in the anued cuap. throng, he suffered agony lest the Lank, very ' . steep at the spot where he faced it, should he inaccessible to a mounted officer ; but he soon found a place where a break in the stiffness of the acclivity left room for the two or three ledges which a horseman must find before he can reach the top. Then he quickly gained the open ground above. The Eussian skirmishers were there. Schooled in habits of deep reverence for military rank, these men may have been startled, perhaps, by the sudden apparition of the hat which bespoke a general officer, and, what was worse, a general officer in a state of displeasure. It seems, too, there is something in the bearing of a fearless, near-sighted man which disturbs the reckonings of other people; for they see that his ways arc not their ways, and they do not know but that he may be right in not fearing them, and that, if they were not to be afraid of him, they them- selves might be in the wrong. At all events, the enemy's skirmishers, omitting or failing to bring down the English General, suffered him to remain unhurt on the top of the bank. There, flushed and angry — he was angry, perhaps, with himself, or angry with the gardens and walls and the perverse winding of a stream which had broken the cherished structure of his battalions — he sat on his grey charger full under the guns of the Great Eedoubt, and the dun oblong columns of the enemy's infantry that flanked it on either Bide. However eagerly lie might be longing