The fire against the castle was continued on the following day, the 6th, with much effect, and the batteries in front of San Christoval had not only overcome the fire of that outwork, but towards midday the breach was judged assailable. At nine o’clock at night one hundred men of the 7th Division, commanded by Major Macintosh of the 85th Regiment, advanced to the assault; the forlorn hope, consisting of six volunteers, and led on by Ensign Joseph Dyas of the 51st Regiment, who solicited this honour, headed the attack. The troops advanced with much order, although opposed to a heavy fire. Arrived upon the glacis, they speedily descended the ditch, and the forlorn hope, accompanied by an officer of Engineers, pressed on to the breach. They had scarcely arrived at its foot when the officer of Engineers was mortally wounded, and Ensign Dyas was in consequence the only person to direct the men at the breach; for the main body, including the commanding officer, attempted to mount what appeared to them to be the breach, but what was in reality nothing more than an embrasure which had been a good deal injured by the fire of our batteries. Some of the foremost succeeded in planting ladders against its rugged face, but their efforts were baffled by the exertions of the French engineers who, notwithstanding our fire of grape and musketry, had contrived to clear away the rubbish from the base of the wall; and the ladders were in consequence not of a sufficient length to enable the men to make a lodgment. A quarter of an hour had now elapsed, during which time several fruitless attempts had been made to enter the fort; and Major Macintosh, with his few remaining men, succeeded with difficulty in reaching their own lines, which they had left but a short time before with feelings of a very different description. None of the party could give any account of Ensign Dyas—indeed, how could they? for the storming party had never seen the forlorn hope from the moment they descended the ditch! As is common in such cases, there were many who said they believed that he, individually, was the last living man in the ditch, and it was a generally received opinion that Dyas had fallen. Major Macintosh, in company with a few friends, was sitting in his tent talking over the failure of the attack, and regretting, amongst others, the loss of this officer, when to his amazement he entered the tent not only alive but unhurt. This brave young fellow, after having lost the greater part of his men, and finding himself unsupported by the storming party, at length quitted the ditch, but not until he heard the enemy entering it by the sally-port.