Part 31 (1/2)

With courage too great alh the columns which enveloped them, when there took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the unners, when the storuns They saw their own cavalry led with the troopers who had just ridden over therace of the Russian narape and canister on thefriend and foe in one common ruin!

It was as much as our heavy cavalry could do to cover the retreat of the miserable remnants of the band of heroes as they returned to the place they had so lately quitted At thirty-five minutes past eleven not a British soldier, except the dead and the dying, was left in front of those guns

William Howard Russell

FUNERAL OF WELLINGTON

Who is he that couest, With banner and with , and breaking on reat by land as thou by sea

Thine island loves thee well, thou faan

Now, to the roll of reatest soldier coreat by land as thou by sea; His foes were thine; he kept us free; O give hieous rites, And worthy to be laid by thee; For this is England's greatest son, He that gain'd a hundred fights, Nor ever lost an English gun;

Reuard the sacred coasts

Your cannons moulder on the seaall; His voice is silent in your council-hall For ever; and whatever tempests lour For ever silent; even if they broke In thunder, silent; yet re you, and the Man who spoke; Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power; Who let the turbid streah and low; Whose life ork, whose language rife With rugged ainst a foe: Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers traland's Alfred nalish Duke; Whatever record leap to life, He never shall be shamed

Tennyson

IN A CAVE WITH A WHALE

Just when the delightful days were beginning to pall upon us, a real adventure befell us, which, had we been attending strictly to business, we should not have encountered For a week previous we had been cruising constantly without ever seeing a spout, except those belonging to whales out at sea, whither we kneas folly to follow the (half-asleep, except the look-out e between two cliffs that we must have passed before several ti a wide sheet of water extending a long distance ahead I put the hel it about a boat's length in width and several fathoether in places The place was new to us, and our languor was te in every feature of the shores with keen eyes that let nothing escape After we had gone on in this placid manner for maybe an hour, we suddenly ca almost sheer from the water for about a thousand feet Of itself it would not have arrested our attention, but at its base was a se, like the , so I headed the boat for it, passing through a deep channel between two reefs which led straight to the opening There was ample room for us to enter, as we had lowered the h, a heave of the unnoticed swell lifted us unpleasantly near the crown of this natural arch Beneath us, at a great depth, the botto of the richest blue conceivable, which the sun, striking down through, resolved into some most marvellous colour-schemes in the path of its rays A delicious sense of coolness, after the fierce heat outside, saluted us as we entered a vast hall, whose roof rose to a ht of forty feet, but in places could not be seen at all A sort of diffused light, weak, but sufficient to reveal the general contour of the place, existed, let in, I supposed, through some unseen crevices in the roof or walls At first, of course, to our eyes, fresh frolare outside, the place seeloom, and we dared not stir lest we should run into sohtened as our pupils enlarged, so that, although the light was faint, we could find our way about with ease We spoke in low tones, for the echoes were so nuave back fro hisses, as if a colony of snakes had been disturbed

We paddled on into the interior of this vast cave, finding everywhere the walls rising sheer froe or a crevice where one ain foothold Indeed, in so fro from some level below the water We pushed ahead until the tiny seh which we had entered was only faintly visible; and then, finding there was nothing to be seen except ere already witnessing, unless we cared to go on into the thick darkness, which extended apparently into the bowels of the o back Do ould, we could not venture to break the solemn hush that surrounded us, as if ere shut within the doht So we paddled noiselessly along for the exit, till suddenly an awful, inexplicable roar set all our hearts thu fit to break our bosoms Really, the sensation was most painful, especially as we had not the faintest idea whence the noise caain it filled that immense cave with its thunderous reverberations; but this tiht of its author A goodly bull-humpback had found his way in after us, and the sound of his spout, exaggerated a thousand tihtened us all so that we nearly lost our breath So far so good; but, unlike the old negro though ere ”doin' blame well,” we did not ”let blaht alongside of us This was too allant harpooner, and before I had tied his weapon deep into old Blowhard's broad back

I should like to describe what followed, but, in the first place, I hardly know; and, in the next, even had I been cool and collected, s of a fevered dream For of all the hideous uproars conceivable, that was, I should think, about the worst The big one frantic with the pain of his wound, the surprise of the attack, and the ha confineles caused such a commotion that our position could only be coht Hoe kept afloat, I do not know Soumption to cut the line, so that by the radiation of the disturbance we presently found ourselves close to the wall, and trying to hold the boat in to it with our finger tips Would he never be quiet?

we thought, as the thrashi+ng, banging, and splashi+ng still went on with unfailing vigour At last, in, I suppose, one supreme effort to escape, he leaped clear of the water like a salether like unfledged chickens on a frosty night; then, in a never-to-be-forgotten crash that ought to have brought down the massy roof, that mountainous carcass fell The consequent violent upheaval of the water should have sainst the rocky walls, but that final catastrophe was mercifully spared us I suppose the rebound was sufficient to keep us a safe distance off

A perfect silence succeeded, during which we sat speechless, awaiting a resumption of the cla: ”I doan' see the do'way any ht The tide had risen, and that half-ht had disappeared, so that ere now prisoners forat all probable that we should be able to find our way out during the night ebb Well, ere not exactly children, to be afraid of the dark, although there is considerable difference between the velvety darkness of a dungeon and the clear, fresh night of the open air Still, as long as that beggar of a whale would only keep quiet or leave the premises, we should be fairly comfortable We waited and waited until an hour had passed, and then caone out, as he gave no sign of his presence

That being settled, we anchored the boat, and lit pipes, preparatory to passing as coht be under the circu the anxiety of the skipper on our behalf

Presently the blackness beneath was lit up by a wide band of phosphoric light, shed in the wake of no ordinary-sized fish, probably an immense shark Another and another followed in rapid succession, until the depths beneath were all ablaze with brilliant foot-wide ribbons of green glare, dazzling to the eye and bewildering to the brain Occasionally a gentle splash or ripple alongside, or a smart tap on the bottom of the boat, warned us how thick the concourse was that had gathered below

Until that weariness which no terror is proof against set in, sleep was ilowing inferno beneath, where one would have thought all the population of Tartarus were holding high revel Mercifully, at last we sank into a fitful sluer of our position One upward rush of any of those raveningto strike the frail shell of our boat, and a few fleeting seconds would have sufficed for our obliteration as if we had never been