“We were almost among them _at once_, we were certainly not twenty-five yards from them.... They yielded ground and we advanced a little, showing a most decided front, but they kept pouring a most deadly fire into our ranks, which began to tell fearfully. The enemy’s artillery were posted on Cossack and Shell hills, and they had seventy or eighty guns at least, but the mist prevented their laying their guns properly for our lines, and they worked the Second Division heights whilst we were far in advance of that; the road was also a point on which they concentrated their fire. Big gaps began to be visible in our line, our dark great coats and bearskin caps towering above the bushes made our men conspicuous in the grey mist.... Several times I saw heads of Russian columns coming swarming through the bushes, the Officers in front waving their swords and shouting to the men; but directly they saw us there was a hesitation, a huddling together, an indecision, and a decided tendency _not_ to come on. They fired quickly and nervously, and generally over our heads; they were so close to us before they saw us, and they were on lower ground than we were; if they had advanced in anything like a decided manner, we _must_ have been entirely swamped and annihilated. But our fellows stood their ground manfully, and the more the Ruskis came up, the quicker our fellows rammed down their cartridges and blazed into them.... Our men were getting very few and far between; our poor company, No. 1, suffered terribly, but we yelled and screamed and fired at the columns we saw in our front; they were immensely superior to us in numbers, ten to one at least, and seemed now to stand their ground very well; they pressed us _hard_. But determination and dogged courage kept them back, and not a yard would we yield. The numbers in front of us increased every second, and we were really hand to hand with them; the bushes were full of English and Russians mixed up together. The groans of the wounded, Officers yelling and screaming at their men, the soldiers shouting at one another, and (I have no doubt) using their favourite expressions, and the firing almost deafened one.