War and Revolution in Asiatic Russia
walk on them in the snow, throwing them forward every three feet to avoid sinking in up to their necks. In this way they advanced painfully all night. The Turks, suspecting nothing, were lying in their snow trenches, their attention chiefly concentrated on how to prevent themselves from freezing to death. At last daylight began to break upon this arctic scene, and through scuds of snow broken by the icy wind, the Turks saw a chain of dark forms slowing closing in on them. They could hardly believe their eyes, for it seemed to them impossible that a human army with rifles and ammunition could cross the country that lay in front of them. By 5.30 a.m. the Turks saw that their trenches on the Sergy-Kaya were being surrounded from the North-east and East, and only a narrow neck of snow-field to the South connected them with the fort of Chaban-dede. So they hastily left their trenches and retreated as fast as the drifts would allow them across the Olugli snow-field till they reached the fort. Chaban-dede was now surrounded on the North-east, but the retreat of the Turkish garrison was not cut off on the South and West, and the Turks with characteristic stubbornness and bravery continued their deadly cross-fire from forts Uzun Ahmet and Chaban-dede, as if nothing had happened. Thus the Derbent regiment had by this manœuvre gained important ground; but the Russians had not yet broken the Turkish cordon that united the forts, nor did the three regiments of the 39th Division dare to advance farther for fear of becoming separated from the Russians to the right and left of them, and so giving the Turks a chance to break through in a counter-attack.
But what had happened meanwhile to the 4th Com-
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