Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/301

THE MAIN FIGHT. 257 The Russians tlius interposed could not doubt chap. the opportunity they had gained, for Cathcart's . '__ troops, as we saw, had abandoned their great- ^cirsnod. coats, and were fighting in red. Heavy fire poured down upon our troops from what had been their own heights. If Sir George Cathcart had obeyed Lord Eag- cathcart. Ian, his organised body of near 400 men would have been standing at this time well posted on the northern slopes of Mount Head, and confining to its lair in the Quarry Eavine that very same Eussian column which had now stolen into his ground. As it was, he had to sit in his saddle with only his staff and a few straggling soldiers about him, looking up at the hostile battalion thus planted in rear of his troops. When the men on the hillside near Cathcart looked up and saw a grey column on the crest he had just now abandoned, they could hardly have failed to conjecture that their heights had been lost through some commander's mistake ; but our soldiers can be superbly indulgent of faults committed by a general, and — if only a rescue be possible — they often, as the great • Captain said, will 'get him out of his scrapes.' Trusting largely — if not indeed wildly — to uisicsoive this generous resource, Cathcart yielded himself to the impulse of his valiant and chivalrous nature. So far as I know, he did not, for even a moment, harbour any other idea than that the Eussians, however many, must be attacked by the English, however few. There were near VOL. VI. B