Then came an order from Lord Raglan to Lord Lucan to “advance and recover the heights,” _i.e._ the Causeway heights; presently supplemented by a further order--“Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front and recover the guns,” meaning the guns captured by the Russians in the redoubts on the Causeway heights. This last order was brought by Captain Nolan, an excitable man, and at that particular moment in a highly excited state. “Guns,” said Lord Lucan to him, “what guns?” Nolan waved his hand vaguely, it would seem, in the direction of the Russian battery at the head of the North Valley and said, by no means too respectfully: “There, my Lord, is your enemy, there are your guns.” [Sidenote: 1854--25th Oct.] Lord Lucan was a quick-tempered man, and probably not in his most amiable mood at that instant. He was one of those officers, rare enough in those days, who had taken particular pains to study his profession, and was on all hands acknowledged to possess more than ordinary ability. His warnings of the previous day had been neglected at headquarters; his perfectly correct dispositions, carefully concerted with Sir Colin Campbell, had been twice upset by superior order, with results that must almost certainly have been fatal, if the Russian cavalry had known its work; and now had come a fresh staff-officer with an order which, not in itself too clear, had been further obscured by that staff-officer’s excitability. Over hastily he accepted what he believed to be the true meaning of the order, and directed Lord Cardigan to attack the Russian battery at the head of the North Valley with the Light Brigade.