268 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP. These Russians were disposed iu no order that ' wt'll could be traced by the eye, but they formed 2dPeitod. ^ thick belt of infantry at a distance of only about twenty or tliirty paces from our people. It chanced that with the English soldiery thus challenged no combatant officer was present ; * yet amongst them they had that kind of leader which the stress of the moment required. As- DrWoise- sistant-sui'geon Wolseley, of the 20th Regiment, had marched with Crofton's wing of the regi- ment. He was one who lived, heart and soul, under the dominion of the Christian faith; but the heraldic motto of his house was expressive, perhaps, of the tendencies handed down to him by his warlike ancestors, and the theory which it bade him remember was this one : ' Man to man ' is, and must be, a wolf.' f Unconsciously biassed, perhaps, by his inborn fighting propen- sity, he had contrived to persuade himself that the spot where his medical services would prove the most useful was — of all places on earth ! — the Sandbag Battery ; and there, strange as it may seem, he had established his field hospital. When afterwards ' the hundred ' fell back, he had moved along with them, and was now one of those whose retreat appeared to be blocked by a part of the lakoutsk battalion. He had come into
- Men maiulj' belonging to the Coldstream might well be
thus circumstanced, for they had lost a huge proportion of their officers either killed or wounded ; and I am not aware that any Coldstream officer was with ' the hundred ' who had adhered to the Duke of Cambridge, and abstained from pursuit. t Homo hovfiini lupus.
