the twenty-four hours, yet Willis's battery
was much injured. The Spanish shot had
pierced seven solid feet of sand-bag work.
Strong wooden frames were therefore
substituted, rammed with clay, and covered
in front and on the top with junk cut in
lengths.

The garrison being worn out with the
incessant harassing night attacks of the
gunboats, the governor determined to give
them a check by sinking guns in the sand
behind the Old Mole. This fire tormented
their camp, and some brigs, cut down
to praams, each to carry four or five heavy
cannon, were moored between the New
Mole and Bagged Staff, to keep the boats
at a distance. The Spanish firing was
now confined to the night, and unless the
garrison provoked it, scarcely ever
exceeded thirty rounds. On the 4th of
August two men of the Fifty-eighth had
a narrow escape. They were asleep in a
tent behind General La Motte's quarters at
the southward, when a shell fell between
them. They did not wake, but a sergeant in
an adjacent tent, who had run away, thinking
the shell had fallen blind, returned to
their tent to wake them. While they stood
there discussing their narrow escape, the
shell exploded, and drove them with great
violence against a garden wall; the tent
and everything in it was destroyed, but
they were unhurt.

On the morning of the 7th of August,
the haze dispelling, showed an English
sloop of war becalmed, and Spanish
gunboats advancing from Algeziras to intercept
her. Although cannonaded by all these
boats she beat them off', and eventually got
under our guns, much cut about, but with
a loss of only one killed and two wounded.
On the 25th of August, a soldier of the
Seventy-third, pinched by hunger after five
days' hiding, made a bold attempt to escape.
Stuffing a sand-bag with grass he came to
Landport, and placing the bag on the spikes
of the palisades, jumped unhurt on the
glacis, then running like lightning over the
causeway, cleared Bay-side barrier, escaping
many hundred bullets. This was the
fourth man who had deserted in six weeks.
On the 27th a wounded sailor in the
hospital was killed by a shell. The poor
fellow had previously broken his thigh, and
having had a relapse from a fall, was in
bed when a shell from a Spanish mortar-boat
fell into the ward, and rebounding,
lodged on him. The other convalescents
and sick summoned strength to crawl out of
the room on their hands and knees, but the
wretched sailor was kept down by the
weight of the shell, which presently burst
and blew off both his legs. What was
most terrible, the poor fellow survived the
explosion, and was sensible to the last,
loudly wishing he had been killed at the
batteries. A few days later a shell from
the lines fell upon the Rock above the Red
Sands, and glancing off dropped to the
bottom of the Prince of Wales's lines, where it
burst on the platform of one of the thirty-two
pounders, and a splinter hitting the
apron of the gun, fired it off. The shot
then took away the railing at the foot of
the glacis, and lodged in the line wall near
Ragged Staff. A shot that fell in an
embrasure killed one of the Seventy-third,
and wounded another man. The latter was
struck down by the wind of the shell, which
then bursting, fractured his skull, broke
his left arm in two places, shattered one of
his legs, tore off part of his right hand, and
burned and marked his whole body with
gunpowder. The surgeons, in despair, and
not knowing where to begin, trepanned him
that day, and two days later amputated
his leg; yet having a wonderful constitution,
this man of iron was completely cured
in eleven weeks, and lived long to enjoy his
magnificent pension of ninepence a day.
In the evening of the 18th of August, a
shell dropped into a house opposite the
King's Bastion, where Major Burke and
two other officers were sitting. The shell
took off Major Burke' s thigh, then fell
through the floor into the cellar, where it
burst, forcing the floor with the major up
to the ceiling. The major died soon after
he was operated upon. The enemy now
fired eight hundred rounds in the twenty-four
hours, and our men were oftener hit,
for they had grown so reckless as scarcely
to regard the shot during working, and it
was almost necessary for the officers to
caution them, even if a shell fell at their
feet. The soldiers were also taught how
to apply the tourniquet, as wounded men
had sometimes bled to death before they
could be carried to the hospital.

The enemy's works getting nearer to the
Rock, and their fire waxing warmer, the
governor, hearing from deserters that the
Spaniards were lulled into security by their
superiority of forces, resolved on a resolute
night sortie. When the gates were shut
after first gun-fire on the 26th of November,
1781, men were told off to meet on the
Bed Sands at midnight with devils,
fire-fagots, and working implements, to destroy
the nearest Spanish batteries. Each man