The central column was a little more successful. The assailants dashed forward with their scaling-ladders, and mounted the parapet of the main fort, but were met at the edge by the Americans, who in a bloody fight hand-to-hand hurled them back. Three times this was repeated, with the same result. The column then moved silently around to another point, put up the ladders again, and mounted so quickly as to get a foothold within the bastion before the Americans could rally in sufficient force at the new point of attack to prevent them. Their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, was at their head, and repeatedly called out to his men to "give the Yankees no quarter." Troops were {247}rapidly drawn to this point from other parts of the fort, and here the bloodiest work of the night was done. The highest officers present mingled personally in the fray. Lieutenant McDonough, an American, being badly wounded, asked for quarter, which Drummond refused, at the same time repeating his order to his men to refuse it in all cases. McDonough roused himself for one more effort, seized a handspike, and kept several assailants at bay, till Drummond disabled him with a pistol-shot. An American who saw this at once shot Colonel Drummond through the breast, and followed the shot with a bayonet-thrust. The Colonel had in his pocket a copy of General Drummond's secret order, and the bayonet passed through the sentence in which "a free use of the bayonet" was recommended. * At daylight the enemy still held the bastion he had gained in the night, and several determined attempts to dislodge him failed, though the number of men he had thrown into it was being continually reduced by an irregular fire directed upon it. The British reserve was now brought up to reenforce the party in the bastion, while Douglass turned the guns of his battery so as to sweep diagonally the * This blood-stained document is now in the possession of the New York Historical Society.