288 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. CHAP, of tlic oroiiud, and they therefore rode part way ^' up the slope which overhung the ravine towards descrying ^hcir right. Before they had yet got quite up to 'ofth°S" ^^^^ ^^^ ground above the ravine, they suddenly '^*^^""'"-' stopped ; for, monstrous, immense, and obtruded before them on the plateau, at a. distance of only a few hundred yards, they saw a grey, oblong-cut block — saw what in one moment they knew to bo a mass of liussian infantry — a mass of unwonted size — standing rigidly built in clo^^e column. This was the great 'column of the eight battal- ' ions' — the dumb, gliding phantasm of the Tele- graph Ileiglit, whose bare aspect had given strange speed to the breathless French aide-de-camp on the knoll, and had just been constraining the head of Canrobert's Division to fall back, and drop imder the crest. With that warlike swiftness of thought which is natural to the French in the hour of battle, the officers who caught sight of this apparition darted straight upon the per- ception of what ought to be done. Some of the guns were brought up to a part of the slope from which, without being easily seen, they could throw their fire into the column.* Tiic column Suddenly Kiriakoff found that his close mass torn by ar- . , , tiiiery-iire: of eight battalious was cruclly rent by shot and shell coming from the west. Without stopping to find out by calm scrutiny the quarter wlience the fire really came, Iviiiakoff hastily accepted
- See the Plan. It is taken from a Kketch which was made
for me by a French officer who was present with the artillery thus brought to bear on the column.
