"Hurrah! hurrah!" cried the wild stormers, as they scrambled up the breach in a mob, encumbered by the killed and wounded, who were falling every second under their feet. A shower of hand-grenades, thrown by the grenadiers of the 20th, who were posted in rear of a low wall close by, drove the enemy back from the chevaux-de-frise, and shattered it to pieces. These military engines, which are now most unaccountably laid aside, were followed by a few round shot from our battery: their discharge created great confusion among the French; so much so that we reached the summit of the breach without suffering half the slaughter I had anticipated. A new engine was now brought into operation, the effect of which will never be forgotten by me, while life and memory remain. "Push on, for God’s sake! O, my brave fellows! trust now to the bayonet, and the bayonet only!" I cried. "Viva Ferdinando nostro e la Santa Fede!" shouted Castelermo, springing to my side; but the Calabrian war-cry was almost lost in the cheers of the 20th, and the terrific din around us: the ear was stunned with one continual roar of frightful sounds. But the groan, the stifled gasp, the agonizing cry were unheard or unheeded: we made the corpses of our dearest comrades stepping-stones, and through the shot and shell-splinters, which swept around us like a hail-storm, we rushed on, to close, to grapple with, and overwhelm the enemy. At their head we perceived the marquis, a noble-looking fellow, on whose broad breast the stars and medals of his achievements were shining in the light from the muskets and bursting bombs. At that instant I reached the summit of the breach, and laid my hand on the chevaux-de-frise to vault over, when the earth heaved and yawned beneath our feet; a tremendous explosion and a dreadful crash ensued: a hundred of my party were blown to atoms in a moment, and I was thrown over the barrier, falling headlong in the midst of the enemy. Unseen by us, after dusk, a caisson des bombes, or tub filled with loaded shells, had been secretly sunk under the stones of the breach, and being slightly covered over by fragments of masonry, lay concealed until the moment we trod upon it; when the French fired it by means of a saucisson, and produced a frightful catastrophe. There was a pause for a moment; but a moment only. The few survivors of the storming party recoiled, and I saw Castelermo clinging with all the desperation of a dying man to a cope-stone of the shattered battlement. The stone yielded and gave way; there was a cry of "Basta!" and the poor knight vanished; but whether into the fosse or the sea beneath the cliffs, I knew not: in either case, I was sure he must have perished.