mouth of which the Spaniards offered some slight resistance. They soon gave way on the advance of the British, but poor Wentworth, always a General by book, with his head full of ambuscades and other traps for the unwary, halted his men instead of pushing on boldly, or he would almost certainly have carried Fort St. Lazar then and there, and broken into Carthagena itself on the backs of the fugitives. Vernon had urged upon him on the day before that he had only to act vigorously to ensure success, but Wentworth was far too much oppressed by the responsibilities of command to avail himself of such sound advice. He advanced no further than to within a league of St. Lazar, encamped, and pressed the Admiral to send him the remainder of his men. Vernon acceded to the request, but with no very good grace. "I send the men," he wrote, "but I still think such a number unnecessary. Delay is your worst enemy; their engineers are better than yours, and a vigorous push is your best chance. No time should be lost in cutting off the communication between the town and the surrounding country. We hope that you will be master of St. Lazar to-morrow." The advice was sounder than ever, but Wentworth could not nerve himself to act on it. Shielding himself behind the vote of a council of war, he replied that the escalade of St. Lazar was impossible; the walls were too high and the ditch too deep. Would it not be possible, he asked, for the ships to batter the fort and sweep the isthmus that divided the town from the surrounding country for him. This was too much. The fleet had borne the brunt of the work so far, but it could not do everything. Vernon's tone, always overbearing, now became almost violent. "Pointis,[149] who knew the climate, tried the escalade and succeeded," he retorted, "the ships can do no more. If you had advanced at once when the Spaniards fled from you, we believe that you would have taken St. Lazar on the spot."