"The enemy is in great force in front, and your commander-in-chief, with the two regiments of your advanced guard, will be surrounded and cut off."
"Lord Raglan, with the 11th and 13th!" we exclaimed, starting to our feet; and just at that moment an aide-de-camp, Captain Bolton, of the 1st Dragoon Guards, came galloping up, and exclaimed—
"Boot and saddle, Colonel Beverley; the 11th and 13th, under Lord Cardigan, are engaged in front. Cavalry supports and horse artillery are instantly required."
The trumpets sounded, the regiment formed by troops, and joined the brigade, which formed in squadrons, and advanced rapidly in search of the enemy.
"Aw—doocid bore, after our pleasant little tiffin," I heard Berkeley say, with a bantering air; but I could see that he looked very white for all that, and Beverley only smiled superciliously, as he twisted his thick moustaches.
"I wonder Berkeley has not his white gloves on," he whispered to me, and I saw some of our men smiling, for it was a regimental joke, or notoriety, that he was in the habit of pencilling on his gloves the words of command he had to issue in succession.
As the junior regiment, we were in the centre of the brigade, the senior corps being on the right, and the next in seniority on the left; and we advanced at a rapid trot, in a column of squadrons at wheeling distance, while the artillery, making a dreadful clatter, with all their tumbrils limbered up, their spare wheels, forge waggons, rammers, sponges, buckets, and other apparatus, went thundering at full gallop to the front.
"In a few minutes, my lads, we may be hand to hand with the enemy," shouted Beverley, as he stood up in his stirrups and brandished his sword; "let us be true to the old motto of the regiment!"
All knew what he meant, and responded by a long and ringing cheer, for our lancers had been raised as light dragoons in 1759, by Colonel John Hale, the officer who came to London with the news of Wolfe's fall and victory at Quebec; and in that year it was ordered by his Majesty George II. that "on the front of the men's caps, and on the left breast of their uniforms, there was to be a death's head, with two crossbones over it, and underneath the motto, 'Or Glory.'" And this grim but significant badge we still wear on all our appointments.[*] It would appear that, early in the afternoon, and before the whole army had halted, our old and one-armed leader, the good Lord Raglan, who had ridden far in advance of the first division of infantry, observed a group of Cossacks hovering on the brow of a green hill, towards the south, on which he ordered part of Lord Cardigan's command, the 11th Hussars and 13th Light Dragoons, forward to reconnoitre. On this occasion Lord Lucan was also present.
[*] Our predecessors in the service were the old Scots 17th Light Dragoons, raised at Edinburgh in the winter of 1759, during the alarm of the projected invasion under the Marechal Duc d'Aiguillon, by Sholto, Lord Aberdour, afterwards sixteenth Earl Morton, who died in Sicily in 1774. This corps, which never consisted of more than two troops, served in the Seven Years' War, and was disbanded in 1763. One of its officers, Lieutenant the Honourable Sir T. Maitland, son of the Earl of Lauderdale, died so lately as 1824, a lieutenant-general, G.C.B., governor of Malta and the Ionian Isles.