Shortly after the changing of the pickets, and just as day was breaking, a sentry of the outermost picket on Mount Inkerman stood straining his eyes to pierce the mist that lay around him dim and silent. Suddenly it seemed to him a part of it towards the Shell Hill became darker than the rest, and then slowly began to move towards him. The sentry rubbed his eyes, thinking he must be dreaming, but sure enough the dark patch moved slowly up towards him out of the ravine, making never a sound, so thick and deadening lay the mist. Instantly he dashed off to his officer in command, Captain Rowlands, and reported his suspicions, and together in the now rapidly-clearing mist they beheld the approach of not one, but two Russian battalions in array of battle. Bang! rang out the picket’s fire, and firing obstinately, disputing every inch of the ground, it fell back before the now rapidly-advancing foe. The Inkerman engagement had begun. Quickly the sound of firing roused the camp, and a battery was at once established on a shoulder known as Home Ridge, to check the enemy’s advance by firing more or less at random into the mist. Shortly afterwards, Lord Raglan and General Camobert appeared on the scene and placed an increased battery at General Pennefather’s disposal. By intermittent firing, stubborn resistance, and occasionally a bayonet charge, the advancing Russian columns were thrown back behind their guns, which were by this time posted on Shell Hill. The respite was not for long. A force of more than 10,000 Russians under General Sornionoff in person next swarmed up in front of Pennefather’s devoted troops now slightly augmented by General Adams and the 41st regiment. Again and again did overwhelming masses of Russians pit themselves, with hoarse cries, against numerically insignificant bodies of our troops. Reports have it that the Russian soldiers had been sent into battle inflamed by large quantities of raw spirit, and certainly the extraordinary violence and pertinacity of their attack tends to support this belief. Be this as it may, their most determined onslaughts proved unavailing. With sword, bayonet, and, where the brushwood was too thick to admit of hand-to-hand fighting, with rifle ball, did our brave fellows drive them back, and many a Victoria Cross was won in the detached, but none the less effective fighting of this the first stage of the long Inkerman fight. Here was Townsend’s battery lost and recaptured. Here Lieutenant Hugh Clifford won his cross “for valour,” leading some seventy men right into the heart of a column which threatened to turn his flank. Here Nicholson and many another gallant officer was killed; whilst, in this part of the field, Colonel Egerton, with some 260 men, totally routed and relentlessly pursued 1500 of the famous Tomsk regiment.