"Take!" he said. But Jim shook his head.
"Yes, yes." And he wrestled feebly again with the ring.
"Better humour him," said the doctor. "It'll do him more good than to refuse."
So Jim worked the ring off for him, and slipped it on his own finger, and the wounded man said "I thank!" and lay back satisfied.
Jim saw him carried down to the boat and wished him luck, and then strode away to his own quarters, which consisted of a seat on the side of a dry ditch--dry at present, but which would be soaking with dew before morning--with his brown horse picketed alongside, as hungry and low-spirited as his master.
Jim looked at his ring and thought of its late owner, and hoped he would get over it, and wondered how soon his own turn would come. For the thing that amazed him was that any single man could come alive out of a fight like that at the Alma.
His horse nuzzled hungrily at him, and he suddenly bethought him of the black bread in the Russians' linen rolls. He jumped up, tired as he was, and trode away to the battlefield again, and came back with chunks of hard tack and black bread enough to make his brown and some of his neighbours happy for the night.
Marshal St. Arnaud, sore sick as he was, was eager to press on at once after the discomfited Russians. But "an army marches on its stomach," and it was two full days before Lord Raglan could make a move. Those two lost days might have changed the whole course of the campaign, and saved many thousands of lives. The defective organisation of the British transport and commissariat slew more than all the Russian bullets.
On the third morning, as the sun rose all the trumpets, bugles, and drums in the French army pealed out from the summit of the captured hill, and presently the allied armies were en route again for Sebastopol.
The next day, however, saw a sudden change of plans and a most remarkable happening. The allied chiefs gave up the idea of attacking the town from the north, on which side all preparations had been made for their reception, and decided, instead, to march right round and take it on its undefended south side. And so began that famous flank march to Balaclava which was to turn all the defences of the fortress.