THE FIGHT IN THE FOG
In the comparative luxury of Colonel Carron's quarters, which were far
beyond anything he could have got in the English camps, Jim pulled
round rapidly. He was in the best of health, his wounds showed every
intention of healing readily, and the Colonel saw to it that he lacked
nothing.
He found himself, somewhat to his confusion, something of a lion
there, and never lacked company anxious to discuss with him the
details of that mad ride up the Valley of Death and back again.
His French visitors were unanimous in their grave disapproval and
admiration; and Jack, whenever he could get away from his trenches for
a chat with the invalid, reported the same feeling everywhere.
Jack himself had had a hand in the tussle with the enemy, the day
after Jim's affair. But he came out of it untouched, and made light of
it.
He reported Harben severely wounded, in the second charge when George
Herapath was killed, and the body of the latter had been recovered and
buried.
It was sad to think of old George gone right out like that. He had
died bravely, hastening to the rescue of his fellows, and the boys
hardly dared to think of the bitter sorrow at Knoyle and Wyvveloe when
the news should get there. It would, they knew, bring right home to
them all the dreadful possibilities of the war, as nothing else could
have done. George gone, Ralph sorely wounded. Who would be the next to
go?
Here, in the camps, with sudden death hurtling through the air night
and day, and sickness still claiming more victims than all the
whistling shells, they were getting somewhat case-hardened, and
accustomed to sudden disappearances and vacant places. But, to the
anxious scanners of the lists at home, each death in each small circle
made all the other deaths seem more imminent, and weighted every heart
with fresh fears.
The zigzags and trenches in which Jack held a proprietary interest
were creeping nearer and nearer to the town, and he was well satisfied
with the progress made. But on one other point he and his fellow
Engineers were anything but content.
The right flank of their position, opposite the Inkerman cliffs and
caves and very close to the road by which the Russian forces got in
and out of the town, seemed to their experienced eyes but ill-defended
and not incapable of assault from the lower ground. And such assault,
if successful, must of necessity entail the most serious consequences
on the Allies.
They spoke of the matter, harped on it, but nothing was done, save the
erection of a small sand-bag battery on the slope of the hill, and no
guns were mounted on it lest the sight of them should tempt the
Russians to come up and take them; and so--that grim and deadly
hand-to-hand struggle in the early morning fog, known as the Battle of
Inkerman--which, for all who were in it, for ever stripped the fifth
of November of its traditional glamour, and left in its place a blind,
black horror--a nightmare struggle against overwhelming odds, which
seemed as if it would never come to an end.
Oh, we won; we won of course--but, as we do win, at most dreadful cost
which foresight might have saved.
Jack was in the midst of it. He had just come up from the front,
soaked with rain and caked with mud, and was making a forlorn attempt
at cold breakfast before lying down, when heavy firing, in the very
place where they had all feared sooner or later to hear it, took him
that way in haste to see what was up.
He could see nothing for the fog and rain, but a hail of shot and
shell was coming from the heights across the valley and he bent and
ran for the shelter of the sand-bag battery. And for many hours--and
every hour an age--the sandbag battery was "absolute hell," as he told
Jim that night, with a very sober face and no enthusiasm.
Endless hosts of gray-coats came surging up out of the fog, yelling
like demons, and fighting with their bayonets as they had never fought
before. They were slaughtered in heaps, but there always seemed just
as many coming on, yelling and stabbing, and our men yelled and
stabbed, and the piles of dead grew high.
But Jack saw very little. It was all a wild pandemonium of clashing
steel and yells and groans and curses, with streaming rain above,
swirling fog all round, and what felt like a ploughed field heaped
with dead bodies below. He picked up a rifle and bayonet, and jabbed
and smashed at the gray-coats with the rest.
Through the fog he could hear the same deadly sounds all round, but
whether they were winning or losing, or indeed what was going on, he
had not the slightest idea. All he knew was that hosts of Russians
kept on coming up in front out of the fog, that they had to be stopped
at any cost, and that, from the time it was lasting, the cost must be
awful.
He stumbled inside the battery one time, after a bang on the head from
a clubbed musket which made him sick and dizzy; and as he sat panting
in a corner for a moment till his wits came back, he told Jim
afterwards that he remembered wondering if he had died and this was
hell; He had a flask in his pocket somewhere, and he tried to get it
out, and found his left arm would not act, though he had felt nothing
wrong with it till he sat down.
He was drenched with rain and sweat--and blood, though he did not know
it at the time. He got out his flask with his right hand at last, and
took a long pull at it and felt better. Blood out, and brandy in, made
his bruised head feel light and airy. He picked up his heavy rifle and
bayonet and staggered out to join the wild mêlée again--one hand was
better than none where every hand was needed.
But he tumbled blindly down the slope and fell, and men trampled to
and fro over his body till he felt all one big bruise. Then the grim
dim struggle swayed off to one side for a moment, and he tried to
crawl away.
A tall Russian--an officer by his sword--lunged down at him as he
leaped past in the fog, but the point struck on his flask and the blow
only rolled him over again, and the other had not time to repeat it.
And presently he crawled away up the hill, and got out of it all, and
down the other side towards his own camp.
It was there his father found him, late in the afternoon, spent and
bruised, and weak from loss of blood, and he went off at once and got
a litter, and took him away to his own tent and set him down beside
Jim. For the English doctors had their hands very much more than full,
and Colonel Carron, rightly or wrongly, had much greater faith in the
nursing arrangements of his adopted service than in those of the
British camps and field hospitals.
When he came in at night, Jack was all bandaged up and as comfortable
as could be expected, with bayonet wounds in his arm and shoulder, a
badly bruised head, and a bodyful of contusions.
"I was just thanking my stars and you, sir, that I was here, and not
shivering to pieces over yonder," he said gratefully.
And with reason. For the Colonel's tent was as cosy a little
habitation as even the French camps could show. He had taken advantage
of a slight hollow, and had had it deepened and the earth piled high
like a rampart all round it, so that only its top showed above
ground-level, and the keen night winds whistled over it with small
effect. And inside was a cheerful little stove, and Tartar rugs, of
small value perhaps, and of crude and glaring colour and design
without doubt, but very homely to look at to boys who had grown
accustomed to bare trodden earth. And for couches, instead of
waterproof cloth and a couple of blankets spread on the ground, they
had clever little bedsteads, consisting of a springy network of
string inside an oblong wooden frame which rested on folding legs like
a campstool.
"We certainly know how to do for ourselves better than you do. Have
you had anything to eat?" asked the Colonel.
"Just had the best dinner we've had since--well, since we dined with
you last, sir," said Jim, with great satisfaction. "I don't know what
it was, but it was uncommonly good."
And Jack asked anxiously: "Have you any news for us, sir? We heard
they were driven back. Are any of our people left?"
"A few; but your loss is very heavy. Ours also; but you bore the brunt
of it over there where the work was hottest. They came up out of the
town at us, just below here, while you were busy there, and they made
a feint also just above Balaclava. It has been a hot day all round. I
hope they'll give us time to breathe now."
"I wonder what lies that fellow Menchikoff will stuff into the Tsar
this time," said Jim.
"He can hardly claim a victory, anyway," said his father, with a
smile.
"I bet he will, sir."
"Did you hear anything as to casualties, sir?" asked Jack, whose mind
could not get far away from that grim struggle in the fog.
"Only outstanding ones. Your loss in big men is terrible. Cathcart is
dead, and Strangways----"
"Poor old Strangways!"
"A dear old chap!" echoed Jim.
----"and Goldie,--all killed. George Brown and Codrington and Bentinck
wounded, and I believe Torrens and Buller and Adams also. Some of your
regiments are almost without officers. Our most serious loss is de
Lourmel, down in front here, repulsing the sortie. They estimate
15,000 Russians killed and wounded----"
"There seemed millions of them lying round that battery," said Jack.
"They reckon there were 8,000 English and 6,000 of our men in the
fight, and between 50,000 and 60,000 Russians. So that every one of
our men put at least one of theirs _hors de combat_--a remarkable
performance indeed."
"I've been thinking, Jim," he said presently, "that a few days on the
sea would set you up again quicker than anything else. What do you
say?"
"I'd like it immensely, sir, if it could be managed. It's awfully good
of you."
"You're creditable boys, you see, and I'm anxious not to lose either
of you. I wonder how soon the medico would let you go, too, Jack?" And
he looked at him with a practised eye. "Not for a week anyway, I
expect."
"I feel as if I could sleep for a week, sir. It's so mighty
comfortable here," he said drowsily.
"They've had such a stomachful to-day that I think they'll keep quiet
for a time now. It was a great scheme and they did their best. It'll
take them a little time to work up a new one. Well, we'll see about it
to-morrow. You think you'll be able to sleep, Jack?"
"Sure, sir, when I get the chance. Jim's been talking ever since the
doctor went."