Oh, the superlative bitterness of that moment, when, with all our horses blown, I look back and see that we are without supports!
The guns are taken—the gunners almost annihilated; our horses are breathless. We have no aid, and no resource but to ride back, under such a concentrated fire as troops were never before exposed to.
"It's all up—threes about—retire!"
A single trumpet feebly gives the call, and away we go.
Shot—in the heart, perhaps—my Arab steed sank down gently beneath me; but I received a severe blow from something, I know not what—the splinter of a shell, probably, which crushed my lancer cap, and almost stunned me. I must have remounted myself mechanically, for when we hacked our way back, and reached the rear, I was riding a bay horse of the 11th Hussars, the saddle and holsters of which were slimy with blood. The horse fell with me soon after, as it had been disembowelled by a grape shot.
Of all those glorious regiments who formed the Light Brigade, there came back but one hundred and ninety-eight men; many of these were wounded, and many dismounted; and when the rolls were called over at nightfall, it was found that one hundred and fifty-seven were dead, one hundred and nineteen were wounded, and that three hundred and thirty fine horses were killed, leaving more than one hundred and thirty dragoons unaccounted for.
I had not the heart to number the forty men who represented the two squadrons which followed Lionel Beverley. There, on the green sward of that Valley of Death, lay our gallant colonel, cut in two by a round shot; Travers, torn to pieces by grape shot; Scriven, slain by three lance wounds; Howard, "the only son of his mother, and she was a widow;" Frank Jocelyn, our old sergeant-major, and an incredible number of others killed. The flower of our lancers were there, and among them my faithful follower, Pitblado, with a rifle bullet in his leg.
Hot, breathless, stiff, sore, and covered with bruises, I now discovered that in the mêlée—though I was unconscious of having struck a blow—there were, at least, twenty notches in the blade of my sword, that I had received three very severe lance prods, two sword cuts, and that my uniform was torn to rags. When we halted to girth up, I threw myself on the rich grass of the valley, and, taking off my battered lancer cap, felt the cool breeze most grateful, as it came from the distant sea. Then I buried my face among the verdure, less for coolness than from excess of weakness, and to hide the sorrow that consumed me for the losses we had sustained.
From a distance came the cheers of the Heavy Brigade, avenging us, and completing the work we had begun. Then the fierce excitement—the devil that had possessed me—passed away, and I thought only of the dying and the dead.
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