He went right along up, from grade to grade, over
the dead bodies of his superiors, until at last, in
the hottest moment of the battle of ... down went
our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for
Scoresby was next in rank! Now for it, said
I; we’ll all land in Sheol in ten minutes, sure.
The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily
giving way all over the field. Our regiment
occupied a position that was vital; a blunder now
must be destruction. At this critical moment,
what does this immortal fool do but detach the regiment
from its place and order a charge over a neighbouring
hill where there wasn’t a suggestion of an enemy!
‘There you go!’ I said to myself; ‘this
is the end at last.’
And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of
the hill before the insane movement could be discovered
and stopped. And what did we find? An entire
and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And
what happened? We were eaten up? That is
necessarily what would have happened in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians
argued that no single regiment would come browsing
around there at such a time. It must be the
entire English army, and that the sly Russian game
was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and
away they went, pell-mell, over the hill and down
into the field, in wild confusion, and we after them;
they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the
field, and tore through, and in no time there was
the most tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat
of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid
victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with
astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right
off for Scoresby, and hugged him, and decorated him
on the field in presence of all the armies!
And what was Scoresby’s blunder that time?
Merely the mistaking his right hand for his left—that
was all. An order had come to him to fall back
and support our right; and instead he fell forward
and went over the hill to the left. But the
name he won that day as a marvellous military genius
filled the world with his glory, and that glory will
never fade while history books last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending
as a man can be, but he doesn’t know enough
to come in when it rains. He has been pursued,
day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and
astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining
soldier in all our wars for half a generation; he
has littered his military life with blunders, and
yet has never committed one that didn’t make
him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something.
Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic
and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one
of them is a record of some shouting stupidity or
other; and, taken together, they are proof that the
very best thing in all this world that can befall a
man is to be born lucky.
