This was visible on the following morning, and Phillipon thought the prospects of the fort so bad that he resolved to risk a sortie, to destroy at all costs the trenches which were so dangerously near to their objective. At midday two battalions--1,000 men--starting from the lunette of San Roque, dashed up the hill, got into the north end of the parallel, and drove out the working parties for a distance of some 500 yards: they carried off many entrenching tools, for which the governor had offered the _bonus_ of one dollar a piece. But they had no time to do any serious damage to the parallel, for the guard of the trenches and the working parties, rallying fifty yards up the hill, came down on them in force, within a quarter of an hour, and evicted them again after a sharp tussle. The loss on the two sides was very different--the British lost 150 men, the besieged 304, of whom many were drowned in the inundation, while trying to take short cuts through it to the gates. The effect of the sortie had been practically _nil_, as far as destroying the works went. During this skirmish Colonel Fletcher was wounded in the groin by a ball, which hit his purse, and while failing to penetrate further, forced a dollar-piece an inch into his thigh. He was confined to his tent for some fourteen days, and his subordinates, Majors Squire and Burgoyne, had to take up his duty, though Wellington ordered that he should still retain nominal charge of the work, and consulted him daily upon it. On the next night (March 20th) the parallel and approach against the Picurina being practically complete, and only the battery emplacements in it requiring to be finished, the engineers of the besieging army resolved to continue the line of trenches into the flat ground in front of the Bastion of San Pedro and the Castle, it being intended that batteries should be constructed here to play on the Trinidad and the neighbouring parts of the fortress, when the Picurina should have fallen. It would save time to have everything ready on this side, when the fort should have been mastered. Trouble at once began--not only from the enemy’s fire, which swept all this low ground, but still more from the continuous bad weather. The rain which had easily run away from the sloping trenches on the Cerro de San Miguel, lodged in the new works, could not be drained off, and melted away the earth as fast as it was thrown up. Mud cast into the gabions ran off in the form of slimy water, and the parapets could only be kept upright by building them of sandbags. The men were actually flooded out of the trenches by the accumulated water, which was almost knee deep. In the rear the Guadiana rose, and washed away the two bridges which connected the army with its base at Elvas. The deluge lasted four days and was a terrible hindrance, it being impossible to finish the parallel in the low ground, or to begin moving the battering-guns, even those destined for