COLONEL YEA'S ATTACK. 189
storm it was hard to see how it could happen chap.
that, unless by some mystic protection, he still L_
might remain alive ; for the air all around him
was boisterous with the rushing flight of war
missiles, whilst the ground in his front did not
cease to throb under the impact of grape-shot,
and the lighter touch of the bullets that came
thickly pattering down to swell the leaden
torrent. A man moving steadily forward under
a fire of this kind when only in quest of the
means by which to begin a fair fight, and un-
heated as yet by the rapture of striking at him
who strikes may loftily use his sheer reason, and
tell himself that the moment is one fit enough,
after all, for that assured meeting with death
which can never be finally shunned; or perhaps
he may find it more simple to suspend for a while
the dominion of his reasoning faculty, and borrow
a lesson from beings which rather are governed
by temperament. Some, for instance, moved for-
ward, head down, and ' butted,' as though in hot
wrath, at the storm of iron and lead.
A time at last came when what remained of The remains
. , . , . . , of the Rifle-
the covering party made good its advance to the men coming
p i i up to the
verge of the Abattis — an outwork of sharpened Abattis;
branches which covered the Redan at a distance
of some 80 yards from its front.
The natural irregularities of the ground in this and ciin g -
part of the field, and the hollows dug out by the ground thej
impact and explosion of shells, gave here and
there some little shelter to any survivor of the
covering party, if lying down closely, and ensconc-
