But Fortune was kind, and sore, on them.
For some days past they had, from time to time, caught the sound of distant bugles among the hills to the north and east of the valley in which their camp lay, and their hopes had been briefly stirred.
It might mean nothing more, however, than the passage of reinforcements into Sebastopol, for those northern ways by Inkerman gorge were always open and impossible of closing.
In front of them on the plain was a line of small redoubts occupied by Turks. Behind them on the way to Balaclava lay the 93rd Highlanders under Sir Colin Campbell.
Jim Carron was awakened from a very sound sleep one morning by a lusty kick from Charlie Denham, and the information that "Lucan wanted him."
Five minutes later he was pressing his horse to its utmost, with the word to Head-quarters that the Russians were pouring down the valley towards Balaclava, that they had already captured Redoubt No. 1, that the Turks could not possibly hold the others against them, and that unless our base at Balaclava was to go, the sooner the army turned out to stop them the better.
Lord Raglan sped Jim on at once to French Head-quarters with the news; and as he galloped back in headlong haste lest they should be starting without him, all the camps were a-bristle and troops hurrying from all quarters to the scene of action.
As he came over the hill leading down to the Balaclava road, he could see the vast bodies of, Russians pouring out of the hills, the Turks from the redoubts were running across the plain towards the long thin line of Highlanders, and the Cossacks and Lancers were in among them cutting them down as fast as they could chop.
All this he saw at a glance, as he sped on to join his own men, drawn up on the left of the Heavies. And as he took his place, panting, both he and his big brown, like steam-engines, he heard the roll of the Highlanders' Miniés on the right as they broke the rush of the Russian cavalry.
The next minute a great body of horsemen, brilliant in light blue and silver, topped the slope in front of the Heavies, and looked down on their Insignificant numbers as Goliath did on David.