They had obeyed orders as they had been understood. But alas, and yet alas! when the brigade returned the whole numbered but 195!
The Russians were certainly beaten at Balaklava, and no clasp glitters with greater honour on the Crimean medal that adorns the breasts of our sturdy veterans; but we lost ground by it.
It might have been well for us had we chosen as our base the bay of Kamiesch, in conjunction with the French.
But a greater battle than all was soon to follow Balaklava.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TRUTH FROM A RUSSIAN—PARABLE OF THE
STOAT AND THE WILD CAT—DAY-DAWN OF THE
MEMORABLE FIFTH.
"Remember, remember
The fifth of November—
Gunpowder, treason, and shot."
Cut out the word "treason" from the last line, and the old-fashioned Guy Fawkes doggerel does very well as a heading for this chapter.
Guy Fawkes had intended to blow up the Houses of Parliament, I believe—that is if my memory serves me aright. Well, reader, boys like you and me don't take much note of politics, do we? For my own part, I think golf is far better, or that grandest athletic game in the world, curling. But politics—faugh! it is cold work, and insincere besides. Didn't Carlyle say something about a House (give it a capital letter, printer, for goodness' sake)—about a House wherein six hundred jackasses bray? So that, as jackasses are plentiful enough—the human sort, I mean—everywhere, the loss of six hundred in a House could very soon be got over. But how about the six hundred hero-hearts that took part in the memorable charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, so few of whom came back to tell the tale?
Give me the hero, I say, and you may do what you please with your politicians and your members of Parliament, hundreds of whom have no more heart and brains than the snow-man which my bairnies are at this moment setting up on the lawn out yonder, and are of just as little use.