at its fire, and made this from first to last his sole guiding star. . . . Pressing always deeper and deeper into this pen of fire, the devoted brigade, with Lord Cardigan still at its head, continued to move down the valley. The fire the brigade was incurring had not yet come to be of that crushing sort which mows down half a troop in one instant, and for some time a steady pace was maintained. As often as a horse was killed or disabled or deprived of the rider, his fall or his plunge or his ungoverned pressure had commonly the effect of enforcing upon the neighboring chargers more or less of lateral movement, and in this way there was occasioned a slight distention of the rank in which the casualty had occurred; but in the next instant, when the troopers had ridden clear of the disturbing cause, they closed up, and rode on in a line as even as before, though reduced by the loss just sustained. The movement occasioned by each casualty was so constantly recurring, and so constantly followed by the same process, the process of reclosing the ranks, that to distant observers the alternate distention and contraction of the line seemed to have the precision and sameness which belong to mechanic contrivance. Of these distant observers there was one- and that too a soldier who so felt to the heart the true import of what he saw, that in a paroxysm of ad iration and grief he burst into tears. In well-maintained order, but growing less every instant, our squadrons still moved down the valley. Their pace for some time was firmly governed. When horsemen, too valorous to be thinking of flight, are brought into straits of this kind, their tendency is to be galloping swiftly forward, each man at the greatest pace he can exact from his own charger, thus destroying of course the formation of the line but Lord Cardigan's love of strict uniform order was a propensity having all the force of a passion; and as long as it seemed possible to exert authority by voice or by gesture, the leader of this singular onset was firm in repressing the fault. Thus when Captain White, of the 17th Lancers (who commanded the squadron of direction), became "anxious," as he frankly expressed it, "to get out of such a murderous fire, and into the guns," as being "the best of the two evils," and, endeavoring with that view to "force the pace," pressed forward so much as to be almost alongside of the chief's bridle-arm, Lord Cardigan checked this impatience by laying his sword across the captain's breast, telling him at the same time not to try to force the pace, and not to be riding before the leader of the brigade. Otherwise than for this, Lord Cardigan, from the first to the last of the onset, did not speak nor make sign. Riding straight and erect, he never once turned in his saddle with the object of getting a glance at the state of the squadrons which followed him; and to this rigid abstinence - giving proof as such abstinence did of an unbending resolve it was apparently owing that the brigade never fell into doubt concerning its true path of duty, never wavered (as the best squadrons will, if the leader, for even an instant, appears to be uncertain of purpose), and was guiltless of even inclining to any default except that of failing to keep down the pace. - So far as concerned the first line, this task was now becoming more and more difficult. When the 13th Light Dragoons and the 17th Lancers had passed so far down the valley as to be under effective fire from the guns in their front, as well as from the flanks right and left, their lines were so torn, so cruelly reduced in numbers, as to be hardly any longer capable of retaining the corporate life or entity of the regiment, the squadron, the troop; and these aggregates began to resolve themselves into their component elements - that is, into brave, eager horsemen, growing fiercely impatient of a trial which had thus long denied them their vengeance, and longing to close with all speed upon the guns which had shattered their ranks. The troopers here and there could no longer be restrained from darting forward in front of the officers; and the moment this licens obtained, the ceremonious advance of the line was soon changed to an ungoverned onset. The racing spirit broke out; some striving to outride their comrades, some determining not to be passed. In the course of the advance, Lieutenant Maxse, Lord Cardigan's second aide-de-camp, was wounded; and when the line had come down to within about a hundred yards of the guns, Sir George Wombwell, the extra aide-de-camp, had his horse killed under him. We shall afterwards see that this last casualty did not end the part which Wombwell was destined to take in the battle; but for the moment of course it disabled him, and there was no longer any staff officer in the immediate personal following of the general who led the brigade. But although he rode singly, and although as we have seen he rigidly abstained from any retrograde glance, Lord Cardigan of course might infer from the tramp of the regiments close following, and from what (without turning in his saddle) he could easily see of their flanks, that the momentum now gathered and gathering was too strong to be moderated by a commander; and rightly perhaps avoiding the effort to govern it by voice or by gestur, he either became impatien' himself, and drew the troops on more and more by first increasing his own speed, or else yielded (under necessity) to the impatien 9 of the now shattered squadrons, and closely adjusted his pace to the flow of the torrent behind him. In one way or in the other, a right distance was always maintained between the leader and his first line. As before when advancing at a trot, so now whilst flinging themselves impetuously deep into the jaws of an army, these two regiments of the first line still had in their front the same rigid hussar for their guide, still kept their eyes fastened on the crimson-red overalls and the white near hind-leg of the chestnut which showed them the straight, honest way-the way down to the mouths of the guns. . . . Lord Cardigan and his first line had come down to within about eighty yards of the mouths of the guns, when the battery delivered a fire from so many of its pieces at once as to constitute almost a salvo. Numbers and numbers of saddles were emptied and along its whole length the line of the 13th Light Dragoons and 17th Lancers was subjected to the rending perturbance that must needs be created in a body of cavalry by every man who falls slain or wounded; by the sinking and the plunging of every horse that is killed or disabled; and again by the wild, piteous intrusion of the riderless charger, appalled by his sudden freedom coming thus in the midst of a battle, and knowing not whither to rush unless he can rejoin his old troop and wedge himself into its ranks. It is believed by Lord Cardigan that this was the time when, in the 13th Light Dragoons, Captain Oldham, the commander of the regiment, and Captain Goad and Cornet Montgomery, and in the 17th Lancers, Captain Winter and Lieutenant Thompson, were killed; when Captain Robert White and Captain Webb and Lieutenant Sir William Gordon were struck down. The survivors of the first line who remained undisabled were feeble by this time, in numbers scarce more than some fifty or sixty; and the object they rode at was a line of twelve guns close supported by the main body of the Russian cavalry, whilst on their right flank as well as on their left there stood a whole mile's length of hostile |