bullocks were cast adrift, and the native drivers were
not slow in going to the rear. The drag-ropes were manned, and the
24-pounders wheeled abreast of the first line of skirmishers just as if
they had been light field-pieces.

When we reached the bank the infantry paused for a moment to see if the
canal could be forded or if we should have to cross by the bridge over
which the light field-battery were passing at the gallop, and
unlimbering and opening fire, as soon as they cleared the head of the
bridge, to protect our advance. At this juncture the enemy opened on us
with grape and canister shot, but they fired high and did us but little
damage. As the peculiar _whish_ (a sound when once heard never to be
forgotten) of the grape was going over our heads, the Blue-jackets gave
a ringing cheer for the "Red, white, and blue!" While the Ninety-Third,
led off by Sergeant Daniel White, struck up _The Battle of the Alma_, a
song composed in the Crimea by Corporal John Brown of the Grenadier
Guards, and often sung round the camp-fires in front of Sebastopol. I
here give the words, not for their literary merit, but to show the
spirit of the men who could thus sing going into action in the teeth of
the fire of thirty well-served, although not very correctly-aimed guns,
to encounter a force of more than ten to one. Just as the Blue-jackets
gave their hurrah for the "Red, white, and blue," Dan White struck up
the song, and the whole line, including the skirmishers of the
Fifty-Third and the sailors, joined in the stirring patriotic tune,
which is a first-rate quick march:

Come, all you gallant British hearts
Who love the Red and Blue,[30]
Come, drink a health to those brave lads
Who made the Russians rue.
Fill up your glass and let it pass,
Three cheers, and one cheer more,
For the fourteenth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

We sailed from Kalimita Bay,
And soon we made the coast,
Determined we would do our best
In spite of brag and boast.
We sprang to land upon the strand,
And slept on Russian shore,
On the fourteenth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

We marched along until we came
Upon the Alma's banks,
We halted just beneath their guns
To breathe and close our ranks.
"Advance!" we heard, and at the word
Right through the brook we bore,
On the twentieth of September,