Jack had hewed his way half-through the dense mass, and had got in amongst some Dragoons, on whose thick gray coats a sword-blade fell quite harmless. The men wore tall red felt shakos with a brass eagle in front, and several of them closed round Jack with the intention of slaying him. One fellow made two blows in rapid succession, and while Jack was parrying these another made a thrust at his head. Fortunately, his aim was too high, and though he pierced the top of Jack’s lance-cap he missed his head. That man fell back with his sword-hand almost severed by Jack’s sword.
The other three, however, uttering their curious zizzing sound through their clenched teeth, renewed the attack, and a blow fell on Jack’s left shoulder which almost knocked him from the saddle. Fortunately for him the aim had not been true, and the flat rather than the edge of the Russian’s blade struck him. As it was he reeled, and next moment must have been struck from his saddle, to have been trampled to death by hundreds of horses; but a sergeant of the Greys cut his way to him, and with three tremendous successive strokes cut down the Russians attacking him.
The pressure thus relaxed, Jack paused a moment to take breath and look round him. It looked like a vast sea of gray coats and Russian faces. Here and there a tall bearskin or burnished helmet could be seen, and an occasional gleam of a scarlet tunic; but in that throng of Russians they appeared buried. A mighty swaying, heaving motion had become imparted to the mass, and it was no longer possible to direct one’s way.
But at that moment a tremendous cheer was heard from behind, and the 5th Dragoon Guards came crashing in. A moment later another cheer, a good, hearty English one, and the Royals rolled up one of the wheeling wings. Then the 4th Dragoon Guards in grand style charged in on the Russian right flank, and the three fresh regiments carved a gory way to the aid of their comrades of the Greys and Inniskillings.
The Russians were pierced and riven, the swaying motion set in upwards, and the enormous mass, incredible as it seemed, began to fall back before the fiery impetuosity of the British Dragoons.
Jack, mixed up with men of different regiments, cut his way out of the left flank of the Russians.
The adjutant of the Greys, a mighty man with a mighty voice, was calling upon his men, ‘Rally, the Greys! Rally, rally! Rally on me!’
Another officer, minus his bearskin, his face streaming with blood, though he seemed unaware of it, joined the adjutant, and the men began to rally on the Russian flank.
A trumpeter of the Greys was near Jack, when an officer, whose burnished helmet was cloven down to his head, laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder, crying, ‘Trumpeter, sound the rally!’
Jack and the Scots Grey sounded again and again. Men of different regiments rallied, formed, and at a word from an officer of the Royals, with a cheer charged once more upon the enemy. Taken now in flank, pressed hard from in front, smitten on all sides by the mighty scarlet-clad Dragoons, the Russians broke, the movement uphill got more pronounced, they turned their horses’ heads, and soon the thousands were galloping up the hill whence but ten minutes before they had come down in all the majesty of overwhelming numbers.