Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/133

THR BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. Ill gave his onset a formidable momentum. The chap. Russian officer turned partly round in his saddle, * ; with a gesture which seemed to indicate that he sought to beckon forward his people, and cause them to flood down over the four coming horse- men ; but already Scarlett and his aide-de-camp were closing. Moved perhaps by such indication of rank as was to be gathered in one fleeting moment from the sight of a staff- officer's hat, the Russian officer chose Elliot for his adversary, and was going to make his first thrust, when along the other side of him, rushing close past the elbow of his bridle -arm, General Scarlett swept Scarlett sweeping on without hindrance, and drove his way into past the bridle-arm the Column. of the Rus- sian officer, It was bv digging his charger right in between and driving the two nearest troopers before him that Scarlett column, wedged himself into the solid mass of the enemy's squadrons. When a man has done an act of this kind, and has lived to speak of it, it is difficult for him to be sure of what might be happening close around him, but Scarlett observed that of the adversaries nearest to him, whom he had not, he knew, gravely wounded, there were some who dropped off their horses without having been killed or wounded by him ; and it seemed to him, if he were to judge only from his own eyes, that they were throwing themselves to the ground of their own accord. It was well perhaps, after all, that Scarlett, in leading the charge, was extravagantly ahead of his troops ; for it seems he was able to drive so