havoc. The enemy came on with loud shouts and undaunted bravery. By the continued glare of our discharges, we could see dense dark masses of men, moving in columns to three separate points of attack upon our works. Our artillery and musketry poured on them as they advanced a continual stream of fire, rolling and glancing from angles, bastions, and redoubts. Repulsed—they were re-formed by their officers, and brought again to the charge, to be again repulsed. At such times, hours fly like minutes. A life appears concentrated to a moment. We had been engaged perhaps an hour—perhaps three, when I heard in that bastion of the Fort, a hundred feet from me, above the uproar, a quick, furious struggle, as if of men engaged in fierce death-fight; a clashing of bayonets, and sharp pistol shots, mixed with heavy blows, and short quick breathing, such as you may have heard men make in violent exertion—in cutting wood with axes, or other severe manual labour. The conflict, though fierce, was short—the assailants were repelled. Those that gained a footing were bayonetted, or thrown back over the parapet. In a few moments, I heard again the same fierce struggle, and again followed the like result and stillness—if stillness could be said to exist under continual roar of musketry and artillery. A third time it rose, sudden and desperate; it ceased, and presently a clear loud voice rose high above the battle from the bastion: “Stop firing in front there, you are firing on your friends.” An instant cessation followed. We were deceived. In another moment, the voice of an officer with startling energy replied: “Aye, aye, we’ll stop: give it them, men, give it them!”—and the firing, renewed, was continued with redoubled fury. The head of the centre column, composed of eight hundred picked men, the veterans of Egypt, led by Lieut. Col. Drummond in person, after three several assaults, had gained possession of the bastion, and by that ruse, endeavoured to cause a cessation of the fire—a result that might have been fatal to us, had not the deception been so soon discerned. But the prize was of little value, as the bastion was commanded by the interior of the works, and the men, under cover of the walls of an adjoining barrack, poured into the gorge that led from it, a continued storm of musketry. The firing continued with unabated fury. The enemy, repulsed with great loss in every attack, was unsuccessful on every point save that bastion, the possession of which they still retained—when I heard a groaning roll and shake of the earth, and instantly the bastion, bodies of men, timber, guns, earth and stones, were blown up in the air like a volcano, making every thing in the glare as clear as noon-day. A descending timber dashed one of my artillerymen to pieces within a foot of my shoulder. Profound darkness and silence followed. Naught but the groans of the wounded and dying were heard. As if by mutual consent, the fighting ceased, and the enemy withdrew,