THE APRIL BOMBARDMENT. 167 their phrase is, more 'comfortable' to work a chap. gun in the open than in what yet remained of the battery ; but so entire was their devotion to the chief that he and they by some magic were all, as it seemed, of one mind. He did not ad- dress the brave men in any sort of harangue, but mingled encouraging words, spoken calmly in genial tones with every special direction required for guiding their labours. What they liked was to see him, and to hear him, to feel that they were ruled by his will.* With no longer a parapet left that could even do so much as delude them with any specious promise of shelter, they went on working, and working their one undisabled gun. That one gun however at last became, like the others, unserviceable, and then — since unable to strike at the enemy, able only to stand and be stricken — the man and the men, one would say, had reached the uttermost limit of what any commanding officer could have meant to assign when directing that the battery should be worked to ' extremity.' Still Oldershaw did not retire, because he had an idea that no such step should be taken without the warrant of ' orders ' ; and ac- cordingly, even after the silencing of the fourth and last gun, he remained with his men in the battery. He did not from first to last see that (in har- inuch broken, and its salients knocked into grotesque forms.' -Conolly's History of the Sappers and Miners, vol. ii. p. 275.
- Mr De Vine (who was one of them) writes eloquently on the
effect produced upon the men by their feeling of devotion to the chief, and the absolute, unmeasured trust they gladly re- posed in his guidance.
