Lieutenant Gilman’s[9] cool conduct and intrepidity on this occasion seem to me so praiseworthy that I should not do justice to my own feelings if I did not recommend him for promotion.” Simultaneously Bowyer was under the necessity of raising the siege of Irois, another post, which Rigaud had besieged for eighteen days with 4000 men. Then hearing that the French had taken up a strong position on a mountain called Morne Gautier, to cut off communication between Irois and Jeremie, he resolved to attack it. He therefore marched in three columns at daybreak on the 16th August, and opened fire at long range. [Sidenote: 1796.] Seeing that the men of the Seventeenth, who formed part of his force, were falling fast, he determined to carry the position by assault, and had formed the Seventeenth for the purpose, when he was disabled by a bullet which struck him in the left breast. None the less the attack was made; and though the British were driven back the French retreated in the night, and Irois was saved. In the course of these operations the Seventeenth lost about thirty men killed and wounded, seven having been killed and fifteen wounded in the attack on Morne Gautier alone. As only half the regiment was in St. Domingo, and that half terribly reduced by sickness, these losses cannot but represent at least a third, if not more, of the numbers engaged. With this the record of the Seventeenth in St. Domingo comes to an end. What further work it may have done is buried in the lost despatches and the lost regimental papers. [Sidenote: 1797.] There is a complete muster-roll of the regiment dated Port Royal, 4th March 1797, showing that 126 men died in the course of the year 1796; but whether the regiment was moved thither from St. Domingo before its return home, or whether it sailed home direct, must remain uncertain. In any case it left the West Indies, and arrived in England in August 1797. The bad luck at sea which had marked the departure from England attended the passage home. The head-quarter ship, the _Caledonia_, foundered at sea, and though the men were saved the baggage and regimental books were lost. Hence the scantiness of information respecting the first forty years of the life of the regiment. CHAPTER IX 1797–1807 OSTEND--LA PLATA [Sidenote: 1797.]