As we left General Prescott in a perilous situation, it may be proper to give an account of the conclusion of the siege, though it comes not within the original plan of my work, which professed only to relate the events that took place under the immediate command of Sir Charles Grey and Sir John Jervis. This I am enabled to do from the communication of a brave and intelligent friend who was there during the whole siege. On the 29th of November, Captain Cockburne, aid-de-camp of General Sir John Vaughan, was sent by his Excellency to Fort Matilda, with the unwelcome news that no more men could be sent thither. On the 5th of December, General Prescott dispatched Captain Thomas, his aid-de-camp, to the Commander in Chief, with an account of the fort being almost in ruins; this officer returned thither on the 7th, and found that the bastion towards the river Galion was totally silenced, and so completely commanded by the enemy's musketry, that not a man could approach it; the adjoining curtain was much in the same state; the bastion towards the town was giving way, and expected to tumble into the ditch every moment. General Prescott no longer thought of defence, but to secure his small garrison, now highly necessary for the defence of the other islands, the unparalleled mortality having left them almost without troops. The pestilential fever had been, in proportion, more fatal to the officers than the men; in the garrison, for instance, there was no officer of intermediate rank between the General and his aid-de-camp Captain Thomas, who was second in command. On the 9th of December, this officer was dispatched to Admiral Thompson, and after the plan of embarkation was settled, he returned to the fort, and the evacuation commenced at nine o'clock on the 10th of December, and was conducted with so much skill, that not a man was lost. In the morning two of the garrison deserted to the enemy; but the General had concealed his intentions so well, that not the least intelligence of it seems to have been given by them. There was no interruption to the retreat except a few musket-shots on the beach, from one of which that active officer Captain Bowen was badly wounded in the face. The enemy, unconscious of this movement, cannonaded and bombarded the fort as usual, until two o'clock the next morning, though the embarkation had been completed by eleven the preceding night. The whole force that marched out of Fort Matilda, was between four and five hundred: some of them were sent to the Isle de Saintes and Antigua, and the remainder to Martinique. Thus concluded a siege of eight weeks and two days, during the whole of which General Prescott evinced the most perfect coolness and true soldierly resolution, neither appalled by the tremendous and well-directed fire constantly, both night and day, kept up against the fort, nor by the insolent and threatening summonses of Victor Hughes.[74] In the