Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/291

THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 269 hands of the enemy ; and, there being but few other chap. i. officers at this time who remained alive and undis- abled, the men knew of nothing better to do than to try to complete their capture of the battery. At the part of the battery which had been entered by these men of the 17th Lancers, the Eussian artillerymen were limbering up and making great exertions to carry off their guns, whilst our Lancers, seeing this, began to busy themselves with the task of hindering the with- drawal of the prey, and in particular the lefter- most portion of them, under the direction of Sergeant O'Hara, were stopping the withdrawal of one of the guns which already had been moved off some paces when a voice was heard Mayow'e ■*■ assumption calling, 'Seventeenth! Seventeenth! this way ! of command J over these. 1 this way ! ' The voice came from Mayow, the officer who held the post of brigade -major; but also it chanced that, with the first line, Mayow was the officer next in seniority to the commander of the brigade (whom he could not, he says, then see), and it was in that condition of things that he took upon himself to direct the operations of this still fighting remnant. Mayow judged that if these men remained Mayows combating in the battery they would be presently the men. overwhelmed by the cavalry which he saw in his front, and that, desperate as the expedient might seem, the course really safest and best was at once, with any force that could be gathered, to attack the Eussian horsemen whilst still they