50 Can scarcely trust his eyes, when he perceives Shout, ye Waves! Send forth a song of triumph. Waves and Winds, Exult in this deliverance wrought through faith In Him whose providence your rage hath served! Ye screaming Sea-mews, in the concert join! Of the survivors-to the clouds might bear- 60 65 ..70 75 Though young so wise, though meek so reso lute Might carry to the clouds and to the stars, name! NOTES. 1 Grace Darling was the daughter 2 Island-rock, Longstone, the only Northumberland, and the site of an ancient monastery in which St. Cuthbert, bishop of Durham, was buried in 687. 4 A wreck, the Steamer Forfarshire. 6 Belike, probably, most likely. 8 Imminent, possible. 9 Incessantly, continually. 10 Perturbed, disquicted. HOW'S MY BOY? "Ho, Sailor of the sea! "What's your boy's name, good wife, My boy John He that went to sea. What care I for the ship, sailor? My boy's my boy to me. "You come back from sea, And not know my John? I might as well have asked some landsman Yonder down in the town. There's not an ass in all the parish 10 "How's my boy-my boy? Brass buttons or no, sailor, Anchor and crown or no! Sure his ship was the 'Jolly Briton '". "How's my boy-my boy? Be she afloat or be she aground, I say, how's my John?" "Every man on board went down, Every man aboard her." "How's my boy-my boy? What care I for the men, sailor? 15 20 25 330 35 40 THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY 1. If the exhibition of the most brilliant valour, of the excess of courage, and of a daring which would have reflected lustre on the best days of chivalry, can afford full consolation for the disaster of this day, we can have no reason to regret the melancholy loss which we sustained in a contest with a savage and barbarian enemy. 2 2. Several battalions of Russian infantry crossed the Tchernaya, and they threatened the rear of our position and our communication with Balaclava. Their bands could be heard playing at night by the travellers along the Balaclava road to the camp, but they "showed but little during the day, and kept up among the gorges and mountain-passess, through which the roads to Inkerman, Simpheropol, and southeast of the Crimea wind towards the interior. " 3. The position we occupied in reference to Balaclava was supposed by most people to be very strong even impregnable. Our lines were formed by natural mountain-slopes in the rear, along which the French had made very formidable entrenchments. 4 4. Below those entrenchments, and very nearly in a right line across the valley beneath, are four conical hillocks, one rising above the other as they recede from our lines; the furthest, which joins the chain of mountains opposite to our ridges, being named Canrobert's" Hill, from the meeting there of that general with Lord Raglan after the march to Balaclava. 6 5. On the top of each of these hills the Turks had thrown up earthen redoubts, defended by two hundred and fifty men each, and armed with two or three guns, some heavy ship-guns, lent by us to them, with one artilleryman in each redoubt to look after them. These hills cross the valley of Balaclava at the distance of about two and a half miles from the town. 6. Supposing the spectator, then, to take his stand on one of the heights forming the rear of our camp before Sebastopol, he would see the town of Balaclava with its scanty shipping, its narrow strip of water, and its old forts on his right hand; immediately below he would behold the valley and plain of coarse meadowland, occupied by our cavalry tents. 7. Stretching from the base of the ridge on which he stood to the foot of the formidable heights at the other side, he would see the French trenches lined with Zouaves a few feet beneath; and distant from him, on the slope of the hill, a Turkish redoubt lower down; then another in the valley; then, in a line with it, some angular earthworks; then, in succession, the other two redoubts up to Canrobert's Hill. 8. At the distance of two or two and a half miles across the valley there is an abrupt rocky |