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Based on a historic painting (ca. 1850)
Adventure, May 1912, with "The Queen, God Bless Her!"
We 'ave bought her the same with the sword and the flame,
An' we've salted it down wilh our bones.
(Poor beggars!—It's blue with our bones!)
IT WAS the month of February in the year of Grace, eighteen hundred and fifty-six, and for about the hundredth time in history, Merrie England was shouldering the burden of disaster. The frost-draped roads that led to Southsea and Plymouth Hoe rang with the tramp of regiments—bearded veterans, led by gray-haired officers.
There was set purpose written on the face of every soldier, and the crowds who lined the roads to watch them forgot to cheer; the excitement was too tense even for expression. Even the meanest among them knew that he was witnessing almost the most dramatic scene in England's history. Her old soldiers had rejoined the colors at the Queen's request, and were marching down in silence to the waiting troopships that would take them to a stricken battlefield. She had asked, and they were giving—to a man, promptly, willingly, and in deadly earnest—the only gift they had for her—their lives!
The early stages of the Crimean War were fought by seasoned troops; they were grown men who stormed the hill across the Alma and who charged up the heights of Inkerman, and they were nearly all grown men who dug the first trenches before Sevastopol. But the carnage was hideous; each battlefield was a blood-soaked shambles, and—worse by far than artillery-fire, or the hail of musketry, or Russian bayonet points—disease lurked in every sodden trench and rotten tent and leaky shelter-hut. Cholera claimed its toll of the finest regiments; dysentery followed in its wake; and then came Winter—the Russian Winter—and caught them unprepared.
The zero blasts that howl among the hills and valleys of the Crimea are dreaded by the Russians; even they suffered tortures in Sevastopol. But the British soldiers, ill-clad and scarcely sheltered at all and accustomed as they were to their milder, sea-warmed climate, perished as flies do in an Autumn frost. Long before the first Winter of the war had sped its course, the army at the front was decimated. And the army at the front chanced to be England's standing army, complete almost to the last man.
The survivors hung on doggedly in the trenches answering the Russian bombs with shell and shrapnel; they were numb with cold, for their clothing was scant and ill-made; they were half-starved, for the food they had to eat was rotten—rotten as the tents that blew to pieces in every gale of wind; all the breath they had over from the fighting they spent in cursing the scoundrelly contractors, who were filling their own pockets at the cost of their country's honor and brave men's lives. But they stuck gamely to the Russians; they penned them in on three sides of their enormous fortress, and sapped closer and ever closer to the Great Redan, while Lord Raglan, who commanded, wrote home by every troop-ship and despatch-boat for men and food and ammunition, but first, last and most emphatically for men.
THEY sent him boys. They could not help it at that stage of the game. The news had reached home of how the troops were faring at the front, and only boys, who knew nothing of the meaning of war, could be induced to take the shilling. The raw, half-grown recruits were sent out in ship-loads at a time, nominally as food for powder; the Russian guns did kill a few of them, but famine, exposure and disease took most of the rest. Raglan wrote again for men—full-grown men, who could endure exposure. But there were no men to send him!
England was scoured for recruits. They dragged the slums of Manchester and London, and drew them blank; mealy-mouthed recruiting-sergeants were sent into the country districts, and into all the poorer parts of Ireland; posters proclaiming the need for men and the glories of military service were displayed in all the market towns—and the country-folk stood round in crowds and laughed at them; for even they knew. There were not one hundred recruits forthcoming as the result of the campaign; and Raglan wrote again for men.
Six Cabinet Councils were held in one week, and every single Minister had a foolish, fatuous plan to relieve the situation; some were tried. A bill was hastily drafted and rushed through Parliament authorizing the Government to recruit soldiers in Germany; recruiting agents were sent, and the country breathed again for an interval, hoping against hope for results.
But the news had filtered through the whole of Europe of how England was treating her gallant little army, and the German peasants showed no more eagerness for that kind of treatment than the English, Scotch or Irish had done. A few joined, but not enough to fill even one troop-ship, and it was not considered worth while to send them; they were paid for their few weeks of drilling, and dismissed.
But Raglan kept on writing home for men. His letters were growing bitter, and his descriptions of the awful state of things before Sevastopol more and more heartrending. It began to look as though the war would have to be abandoned—as though the awful sacrifice and the unconquerable devotion of the tortured soldiers had gone for nothing.
The newspapers, that had at first glossed over things and had all along backed up the Government steadfastly, began to harp to another tune. Cabinet Ministers backed and filled, trying to feel the trend of public sentiment and ready to advocate peace with dishonor the moment the mob seemed ready for it. Probably within another month the remnants of the British army would have been ordered home again had England not possessed a Queen who knew her business and who could read the heart of men.
She not only could read them, but she did! She looked from her high position down through all the different layers of society to the bottom dregs of it; and then she had a Royal Proclamation printed.
She invited her old soldiers to rejoin the colors. She did it on her own responsibility and asked it as a favor to herself; and th» answer she received from city and town and village—from poor-house and doss-house: from slum and furrow—came flung back like an echo. In ten days there was an army! Her poor old pensionless fighting men who owed her nothing but their loyalty, and who had nothing else to give her but their lives, demanded the right to die for her.
They would have seen their country to the dogs, and the Government to the devil, and would have never raised a finger. But the Queen—why, GOD BLESS HER! They would march hungry into Hell and fetch out Satan if she wanted him. And gray-haired officers left their club armchairs and wept on parade, openly and unashamed, at the sight of their old die-hards back again.
ONCE more bugles and trumpets rang in the barrack squares; once more the echoing depots from Plymouth all the way north to Edinburgh and from Cardiff right across to Hull shook to the tread of companies; gun-chains jingled again on Portsmouth Hard, and the neigh of horses and the short, sharp, barked commands gave notice that the veterans had answered the summons of their Queen, and that Merrie England was on her feet again.
There was little talking, and next to no argument; these men were out to do the Queen's business and to do it quickly. They were mustered—four batteries of horse artillery, and ten regiments—under their old territorial designations; and for the most part they were led by the officers they had known before they left the service.
There was one exception. Colonel Lacy, a straight-backed, gray-haired man of sixty, left a sick-bed two days after the Proclamation and hurried to his depot; but he came too late. Every single vacancy was filled. He was a man, though, with a record, and was known personally to the Queen; so they gave him leave to pick one thousand men from among the other regiments, and to make them into a regiment of his own under officers of his own choosing.
Lacy's Regiment was the first of the Old Brigade to march down to a troop-ship; not a man of it—either officer or private—was under fifty years of age; they were gray-bearded, well-chosen fighting-men, and of all the famous regiments that have left the shore of England in the long, battle-blistered course of history probably there has been none better qualified than Lacy's to head the roll of honor.
The whole Brigade was reviewed on Southsea Common before it left, and the Queen came down from London to present its Colors to each regiment, and to wish the men Godspeed. They greeted her in grim silence—pieces held at the "present"—long, glittering, motionless rows of crimson-coated statues. Then suddenly, when the last Color had been entrusted to the man who was to take it into battle, and the Queen had sobbed out a few words of praise and gratitude, ten thousand rifles leaped flashing in the February sun, and from ten thousand throats there came a roar of fealty such as no other monarch ever listened to.
Caesar heard something like it when the gladiators bowed to him in ancient Rome; but the gladiators were not free men, dying of their own free will; they had to do it. The Old Brigade was going out to face just as certain death as ever gladiator did; but the men were going because they chose to go, and for the sake of a Queen they loved. That crashing salute of theirs must have made a proud woman of their Queen.
THOSE were the early days of steam, and the transports were not dependent on the freak of wind and tide. It was still the month of February, and the Russian Winter was still wreaking its icy vengeance on the warring armies when the Old Brigade arrived, and marched from Balaclava to Sevastopol.
Raglan reviewed them with a frown that hid his real feelings; and he swore at them because the words he would have said crowded together in his throat. They understood, and saluted him in silence. Then they themselves took the salute of the whole army, marching to the place assigned them past lines of ragged tatterdemalions, new-scorched and blood-soaked from storming the Gates of Hell; hungry, fever-stricken sappers leaned on picks and looked at them as they marched past with the earth-shaking, machine-like tramp that would restore confidence to sinners on the Day of Judgment, and a thrill went through the besieging army that bode trouble for Sevastopol. There was no cheering; men saved their breath for what was coming.
They pitched their camp in a quagmire of mud and blood and slush, and fell to as none but old soldiers can to make the best of it. But Raglan had no intention of letting them rot in the scurvy-ridden lines as so many other men had done, while the sappers dug and scooped and dug and zigzagged nearer and ever nearer to the Great Redan.
The Russians were still inside Sevastopol because their rear was open; Raglan had never yet had men enough to cork them in, and throughout the siege they had been able to march in fresh men when they chose to, and to march out the war-worn regiments that needed rest. The Russians had been hit, and hit hard; but, with an open rear in their favor, not all the invading armies in the world would have had a fair chance against them.
Now, with these splendid veterans at his disposal, was the time to close that rear, and Raglan sent for Colonel Lacy two days after the Old Brigade arrived.
"Do you know Sevastopol, Colonel?" he asked him. "I have heard that you were born here."
"Not born here, sir. My father was stationed here, though, and I lived in the city for eight years before getting my commission."
"Then you know the neighborhood?"
"Perfectly."
"Could you guide a brigade round to the rear by night and place it in such position before morning that it could prevent the Russians from marching in reinforcements from the north?"
"Without a doubt."
"We have sapped very close to the Great Redan now, Colonel; the idea is to block the Russian rear and then to attempt to take the place by storm; the French report that they are ready to attack the Little Redan the moment we give the word; if the Old Brigade could be in position behind Sevastopol to-morrow morning I would risk an attack at once. I want your opinion; do you think it is practicable?"
"Yes, sir."
"How would you direct the march?"
"Can you spare any cavalry, sir?"
"Not a man!"
"There are four batteries of horse artillery with the Brigade."
Raglan scowled, and nodded.
"There are two roads, sir. One of them runs due north, close to Sevastopol; the Brigade could follow that, but it would be unsafe to trust the guns along it. The other road runs northeast, five miles to the right, and four miles or so northeast of Sevastopol a crossroad connects the two. The guns, with one regiment as escort, could take the right-hand road, and the Brigade could wait for them. The guns with their escort would traverse two sides of a triangle, covered all the time by the rest of the Brigade traveling along the base of it. Almost due north of the fortress is a splendid position that we could seize, and once in possession of it we would be difficult to dislodge."
"Very well," said Raglan; "join your regiment, sir!"
Orders came that evening for the Old Brigade to fall in at dusk in full marching order, with three days' rations for men and horses; and there was a special order that Colonel Lacy should take his regiment and escort the guns along the right-hand road. There was a Lieutenant-General commanding the Old Brigade, and it was he who gave the Colonel his instructions; but he was annoyed that Lacy's opinion should have been taken instead of his, and was barely polite in consequence. The Colonel tried to explain to him the exact bearings of the crossroad, but he was cut short promptly.
"I am told you know the way, sir!" snapped the General; "You have your orders!"
So Lacy, drawn to his full height—proud as Lucifer, punctilious as Royalty itself—saluted, and rode off in the gathering gloaming to lead his regiment.
HE LED off himself, followed by four companies; behind them came the guns, with the remaining companies on either side of them. There was no danger of a rear-guard action; it was in front and on either hand that the guns needed covering. The men marched off in silence, for the idea was to get behind the Russians before being discovered; there was little need, though, to check those gray-beards for talking, for they were altogether different from the ordinary rank and file: they were anxious to put the Queen's business through.
Along their line at intervals swung lanterns that lent their procession a ghastly witchery; the struggling gun-teams, hauling the big black muzzle-loaders through the slush, sent up a cloud of eerie-looking vapor to heighten the illusion; and as company after company maneuvered and swung into formation, the sharp words of command rang through the night like the cries of graveyard ghouls.
Weirder-looking ghouls than they peered at them past camp-fires and the ends of trenches, and grinned at them with envy; four batteries and an escort do not march northward in the night for nothing; they would surely be at hand-grips with the Russians before the dawn, but why—why by the God of everything unfair and damnable—should these bearded new arrivals be chosen for the hocking in place of the men who had struggled to get their fingers on the Russians for two long years? They envied them and damned them as interlopers in the same breath.
The last file had trudged beyond the farthest camp-fire, when suddenly one heavy gun gave tongue over on the far left wing; it was the signal for a heavy cannonade to throw the Russians off their guard. Mortars and howitzers and siege-guns took up the chorus and poured a thunder-storm of shells into the Russian batteries.
The Russians suspected a night attack in force under cover of that bombardment, rallied their troops to the threatened point, and answered with every gun they had; their belching batteries lit up the space in front of them with livid shafts of flame, and straight back into the hell of fire and smoke the British infantry sent volley after volley of whining rifle-balls. Then snow began to fall and the firing ceased.
The snow came down in an endless, swirling flood, as though the gray sky above were full of snow all the way up to heaven and somebody had turned it loose; it fell silently, softly, ceaselessly, shrouding the blood-soaked countryside in clean new white; damping down the camp-fires, cooling the ardor of even the British gunners. The Russians saved their ammunition and went to sleep, for they knew well enough that no army on earth would risk a night attack in such a snowfall.
But Colonel Lacy marched on. He had his orders and he knew the way. When the gun-teams floundered in the snowbanks—and they floundered every other minute—he set men to hauling on the drag-ropes and, although all sign of the road was lost in less than twenty minutes, his wrist-compass gave him the direction and he held on due north. He was determined the Brigade should not wait long for him.
The four companies that marched in front packed the snow firmly as the night grew colder and the surface froze; then the horses and the men behind marched easier, and though as they advanced the snow fell swifter and ever swifter until the black sky seemed torn into a million dark gray tatters that whitened as they neared the earth, the trail began to slide beneath them rapidly to the scrunch—scrunch—scrunch of the regulation quickstep.
Before long, though, a wind sprang up, ice-ripped from the steppes of Russia; it cut them to the marrow, and blew their lamps out, and piled the snow in powdery drifts around their legs, and froze the breath on to their beards until their lips ached with the pain of it. And then a worse thing happened. The snow froze on the face of Colonel Lacy's wrist-compass, and in trying to scrape it off with blue-cold fingers he smashed the thing. Then the regiment lost itself!
THERE were no stars to judge their course by—nothing but dead black sky seen through gray snow whirled by a shrieking wind; but they marched on for more than an hour after Lacy knew that he was lost; he was hoping to pick up some recognizable landmark, or to stumble on some skirmishers from the main column; the column should be over on their left, not so very many miles away, and surely the column would march well protected.
The men, too, knew that they were lost, for they were old soldiers; they sensed it, knew it by instinct, and judged it by the behavior of their officers; but their business was to serve the Queen by obeying orders—that being the first rule of their service.
There was another rule of the service that was troubling Colonel Lacy. The commander of an artillery escort is responsible for the safety of the guns; he and his men must screen them and protect them—dying beside them if need be, but on no account deserting them. Should the guns lose their teams or become unmanageable owing to the conformation of the ground, he must stay by them and defend them until fresh teams arrive, or until the army can advance and rescue them. The guns are the main thing.
On the other hand, the guns are not responsible to him. They are a unit in themselves, acting independently; if they choose to leave him, they may do so, and he must follow them as best he can. The arrangement is easiest to understand when the senior officer chances to be a gunner; but in this instance the senior was Colonel Lacy, and he not only commanded the escort, but he had orders to lead the guns to a certain rendezvous.
The Colonel commanding the four batteries rode up to him and touched his shoulder; there was no other way of attracting his attention, for the snow fell so thickly that a man's voice would scarcely carry beyond his horse's head.
"We're marching round and round in rings, sir!" he shouted at him. "My horses are hard put to it to drag the guns in any case. I'm going to halt!"
Lacy sought out a bugler; one snow-draped figure looked exactly like another in that storm, but he discovered one at last.
"Sound the halt!" he ordered.
The bugler tried it, clapping his ice-cold instrument to his frozen lips and blowing with all his might; nothing came of it but a weird wail that sounded above the shrieking storm like a lost child crying.
"Warm that bugle and keep it warm!" ordered Lacy; then he turned to the gunner. "See if your trumpeter can do it, sir!"
It was that request, snarled out impatiently, that saved the guns at daybreak. The trumpeter failed even more signally than the bugler had done, and officers had to ride down the line and halt each battery and company in turn; as they rode, though, they found time to damn the buglers and trumpeters, so that until day broke the men breathed constantly into their instruments and kept their lips protected as best they could.
When the column halted there was a momentary consultation among the officers, held out of hearing of the men—ten paces or so to windward.
"I'll not risk the guns a yard farther, sir," said the gunner. "Let's find the way back!"
"Impossible! The snow has covered up our tracks."
"Then I'll halt here till daybreak! We're wearing out the horses to no purpose."
Lacy drew himself up to his full height; none but he could have shouted through the storm with dignity, but he impressed even the gunner. And gunners are an unimpressionable race of men.
"My orders are to join the rest of the Brigade at a point four miles northeast of Sevastopol; I shall obey them, sir!"
"Then you'll go alone," said the gunner; "I know my duty!"
"We're late," said Lacy; "the Brigade must be waiting for us somewhere over on our left; if we march in that direction we must surely run into their skirmishers.
Why, sir, the assault on the Redan is timed for daybreak; if we're not in position by then, God knows what will happen! We're no use here!"
"All right," said the gunner; "change direction, and look for the Brigade."
"Change direction—Left!" roared Lacy.
"Forward—March!" And this time the bugle echoed him.
FOR two more solid hours the four-and-twenty guns and their escort of frozen infantry groped through blinding snow in what they imagined must be the direction of Sevastopol. The hell-glow that lay above the city by night was absent, for the snow obscured everything, and there were no stars to see by. The only thing they had to guide them was Colonel Lacy's sense of direction.
An hour before daybreak the snow ceased falling. Then almost at once a gap loomed up in front of them, sharp-hewn as though a cyclops' ax had done it, in a ridge that ran north and south one hundred yards away. And from beyond the gap came the snow-deadened thunder of an army marching.
"The Brigade!" said Lacy.
"The 'Old,' thank God for that!" came from the depth of the being of every weary one of them. The horses heard it, and their spirit rose in tune with the spirit of the men who rode them—as is the way of horses. They tugged at the traces willingly for the first time since midnight. The escort got into step again, and the quick trudge—trudge—trudge of well-trained infantry succeeded the fluttering noise of a thousand footsteps out of time. They marched through the gap in good formation.
It was a quite peculiar gap. A long forty-foot ridge ran for several miles on either hand—sharp, snow-draped and unclimbable. That gap was the one way through it, and it had evidently been cut there by engineers for military use, for the road descended through it at an easy angle and the sides were sharp and even. On the side nearer to Sevastopol and at right angles to the track the guns were following ran a good broad road, tucked close in under the shelter of the ridge and parallel to it; and although nothing of it could be seen as yet, the Brigade was coming down it, for the noise even of a snow-bound army is unmistakable.
Lacy led the guns and escort straight across this second road, fronted them toward it, and halted, two hundred yards away; he intended to fall in in the rear and follow when his men and horses had had a much-needed rest.
The advance guard of the oncoming Brigade, marching in fours, led it by only a hundred yards or so; it was followed by a mounted officer who rode past without so much as a sign of recognition. Lacy thought he recognized him as the General who had snubbed him on the evening before, so he sat his horse in silence; it was no business of his to make advances. He had joined the Brigade as ordered, and now he could either wait for fresh orders or he could follow.
The Brigade marched on until the middle of it was abreast the gap. Then the sun rose. It rose straight in the Colonel's face, for he was facing eastward, and peered at him from above the ridge. The Brigade was still in darkness underneath the ridge, but on every hand the dull, dead, dreary gray-white of the snow changed in an instant to a billion jewels, set in a sea of melted rainbows; for a moment his eyes were dazzled.
Then the Brigade loomed out, dark and shadowy, but growing every moment more distinct; and he looked quickly from end to end of it.
Out flicked his sword above his head, and he rose in his stirrups and looked behind him.
"Form rallying squares!" he roared.
The bugler behind him greeted the rising sun with a blast that the sun has listened to on too many stricken battlefields, and he was echoed by ten more bugles. Before the last ringing Ta-ra-ra-rah! had died away over the dazzling snow, the front ranks were kneeling in three ugly-looking squares, and behind them, their rifles at the "charge," stood the rear ranks, ready to fire over their heads.
"Charge your pieces!" ordered Lacy, steady as a rock.
And a wave of right hands lifted as the men bit off their cartridge-ends. This was no Old Brigade! In front of them—two hundred yards away or less, was a Russian army, ten thousand strong, marching somewhere up northward for a rest! And it was between the guns and the gap—the only road to safety.
THE Russians halted. An eagle rose over in the distance, glided overhead, and circled expectantly. For ten seconds his harsh cry was the only sound as the two sides stood and stared. The silence was broken then by a trumpet-blast that blared out from behind the rallying squares.
"Walk—March!" roared the Colonel of the Gunners.
The battery teams strained at the traces to the tune of the smack—smack—smack of whips, as the frozen gun-wheels broke out from the snow-ruts. It was the business of the guns to get away—and the guns had started.
"Terr—ot!"
Crack came the whips again as the horses dug their toes in and the traces jingled. The guns began to bump over the frozen snow instead of sinking in, and the speed was growing.
"Canter!"
They were into their stride in a second—less than a second. The spirit of the men had fired the horses, and clouds of powdered snow went scooting right and left as the well-remembered rattle of the limbers rose behind them.
"Gallop!"
And the Gods must have held on in Olympus, for four batteries of horse artillery—hub to hub—advancing at the gallop is an amazing sight in peace. It is the whole quintessence of all the horrors rolled into one in war.
"Trumpeter! Sound the charge!"
"Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-rah!" rang the trumpet, and three more echoed it.
"Now ride, men! And follow me!"
A roar went up like the snarl of a wolf-pack hard on a hunted buck, and the deserted escort roared again, flinging up their rifles in the same earth-shaking salute their Queen had heard at Southsea. Yells, and bugle-calls and oaths burst out from the enemy, and a stampede started—ten seconds too late! On went the guns, four-and-twenty thundering, jingling, bumping, saber-slashing juggernauts, wheeling one behind the other at the flog. Straight for the gap they rode, and burst through the Russian column, leaving a swath behind them like that a reaper cuts—an Armageddon swath of crimson blood-wet wheat that shrieked for mercy as they passed!
As the last gun curtsied up the short incline with the roar of hell behind it, infantry bugles rang again.
"Form companies!" roared Lacy.
Three sides of each square unfolded, and flicked, like a bird's wings opening, into one long crimson line.
"At point-blank range present your—pieces!"
"Fire!"
It was nothing short of murder at that short range.
Not a bullet missed.
"In quarter column on number one—Charge!"
The Russians came two ways at once to close the gap and follow the retreating guns; the veterans caught the double wave of men end-on at the bayonet-point; they drove the Russians through in front of them—killed them—and piled them warm and bleeding as a rampart across the gap! Then they turned at bay to cover the retreat of the batteries that were scooting across the snow southward Like a black cloud.
The guns halted, though two miles away, and an officer rode back hell-bent-for-leather.
"My colonel's compliments, sir!" he said, saluting Colonel Lacy.
"Tell him to save the guns!" snapped Lacy. "I'll hold this pass."
"But—"
"Tell him to do his duty—save the guns!"
"Good-by, sir!"
"Good-by, my boy!"
To the rear, four or five miles to the eastward of where the guns were, rode a British officer, spurring a winded horse—crimson and blue and yellow braid on a background of glittering snow—his bearskin laid well back on his head, and his sabretache streaming out behind him. He was headed straight toward the gap, and the rear ranks of the rear company saw him and passed the word along.
"News of the Brigade!"
A MURMUR rose and rippled from rank to rank and ended in a growl. The Brigade would find nothing to be ashamed of when it got there! Colonel Lacy rode out in front as proud of his command as Lucifer was on the day he lost his job in Paradise; he had more right, though, than Lucifer, for surely no commander ever led men like his before. A Russian officer had waved his handkerchief, and he was riding out to meet him.
"I presume you surrender, sir?" said the Russian, in perfect English.
"Certainly not!" said Lacy; "I'll see you —— first!"
And the veterans behind him flung their rifles up and roared again. They laughed, most of them.
"Very good, sir. Defend yourself!" said the Russian, turning his back.
And Lacy turned his, and sat his horse in the middle of the roadway behind the hedge of fixed bayonets that blocked the enemy's only means of access to the retreating guns.
It was the guns the Russians wanted. They could have starved the regiment out, or mowed them down with rifle fire; but to get the guns they would have to hurry. For horse artillery can streak across the ground like blown dust devils. They had formed in dense array of regiment on regiment and the huge mass clove asunder suddenly, as the Red Sea opened up for the hosts of Israel; and down the passageway they left rode a regiment of Cossacks.
It was sheer, rank madness, for the Russian General counted on the very sight of them to scare the British. He might as well have tried to scare the ridge that ran snow-draped on either side of them.
The Cossacks swept onward with a yell, twirling their lances and riding like men possessed. They, too, counted on the moral effect they were accustomed to producing. Two volleys met them—two thunderstorms of big round rifle-balls, let loose at fifty yards by men who were neither conscripts nor afraid of conscripts; and what was left of the regiment of Cossacks slunk back again under cover of the brigaded infantry.
Then up rode the British galloper and reined in his weary charger at Colonel Lacy's stirrup.
"I've been looking for you all night, sir!" he panted, handing him a note.
Lacy took it, and tore it open:
Return at once; owing to the storm the general assault has been postponed. Raglan.
"So they're not assaulting the Redan?"
"No, sir."
"And the Brigade?"
"Is in quarters, sir."
"Men!" said Lacy, his clear voice ringing like a bugle in the frosty air; "we can best serve her Majesty by dying here! There has been a mistake; the Brigade remained in camp. All we can do is save the guns, and we can save them only by not surrendering!"
"No surrender, sir! No surrender!" came the answer.
"Then charge your pieces!" he ordered sternly.
Then he drew out a pencil and scribbled hastily on a sheet of paper.
"Take my horse," he ordered the galloper, "and take this note to Lord Raglan; present my compliments to his lordship and tell him that Lacy's regiment will do the service no discredit. Now go, sir!"
The officer changed horses, and saluted. "Good luck, sir!"
"Good-by!" said Lacy; "don't forget to present my compliments to his lordship!"
THE Russians still had a chance to take the guns, for no horses in the world can pull ordnance at a gallop across a snow-field for more than a mile or two; and Cossack horses, accustomed to the snow, could have overhauled them if the passage through the gap were forced in time.
They started in to force it. They marched men to the attack with the utter disregard for human life that characterizes Russian tactics, company by company, covered by a converging rifle-fire from either flank, and the dwindling regiment of veterans fed the front ranks steadily, stepping into the gaps and answering the galling rifle-fire volley for volley.
Their ammunition gave out presently, and only enough of them were left to block the roadway with one thin, red, double line. Then the Russian called his forces off and waved his handkerchief again.
"For the love of God, surrender, sir!" he shouted.
"No surrender!" roared the veterans, closing in together and preparing for the last struggle.
"You have heard your answer!" said Lacy. "Now, steady, men! Close in round the Colors, and strike a hard blow for the Queen!"
The Russian had no alternative; it was as plainly his duty to capture the guns as it was Lacy's duty to defend them. So he marched a regiment up to give the coup de grāce, and sent them in with bayonets to meet their foe on an equal footing at least so far as weapons were concerned.
Even then the battle lasted for another twenty minutes—till the guns were out of sight beyond the sky-line and beyond all hope of capture. The veterans closed in round their remaining officers in a steaming, reeking shambles of crimson slush, till the last man stood across his Colonel's body with the Colors down on the snow behind him!
They tried to capture him, but taking a bear at bay would have been a simpler task, and they had to cut him down. With his last effort he thrust his bayonet home to the locking-ring in a Russian stomach, and with his last breath he shouted, as the muzzle of his rifle struck the Russian's tunic:
"For the Queen—Gawd bless her!"
Then the Cossacks leaped their horses over the piles of slaughtered soldier-men and set off in pursuit of the guns they could never catch.
The Russians bore no malice. They had slain because they had to, in submission to an exigency of war. They buried the British side by side with their own men, and stood bareheaded while the firing-party boomed out the soldiers' requiem. But they shuddered when they thought of the fortress left behind them, and remembered that it was an army of men such as these that was besieging it. God help Sevastopol!
IT FELL; and they make V.C.'s of Russian cannon captured there. They have made five hundred of them, and there are cannon enough to make a hundred thousand more. To set off against the cannon the Russians have the Colors of one British regiment; but the regiment was dead to a man before they got them! The veterans had kept their promise to their Queen, and had laid down their lives for her; and, as Colonel Lacy had promised in his message to Lord Raglan, the regiment had held the gap and had done no discredit to the service. The big, green, nameless mound that hides their bones is only one of a hundred such, scattered across the globe, that prove what a Queen can do who knows how to read men's hearts. God bless her!
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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