He knew the weakest point of the
British position, and rightly guessed that the enemy would know it
too.
"I shall go to Inkerman," he said. "That is their real point, I feel
sure. And we must have up all the reinforcements we can muster. You,
Burghersh, tell Sir George Cathcart to move up his division and
support Pennefather and Brown. You, Steele, beg General Bosquet to
lend me all the men he can spare."
Pennefather had his hands full by the time Lord Raglan arrived. With a
paltry 3,000 odd men he was confronting 25,000; but, happily, the
morning was so dark and the brushwood so thick that his men were
hardly conscious that they were thus outnumbered.
Not that they would have greatly cared; they were manifestly animated
with a dogged determination to deny the enemy every inch of the
ground, and with unflagging courage they disputed his advance,
although they were so few. Once more it was the "Thin Red Line"
against the heavy column: hundreds against thousands, a task which for
any other troops would have been both hopeless and absurd.
But Pennefather's people stoutly held their own. On his left front,
one wing of the 49th Regiment routed a whole Russian column, and drove
it back at the point of the bayonet down the hill; to give way in
turn, but not till it was threatened by 9,000 men.
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