“Can’t help it,” shouted back her commander. “Can’t spare men to put it out. Have only just enough to keep our guns going.” But, in her turn, the _Opossum_ had to give up the fight for awhile and drop down to the first barrier. The _Lee_ and the _Haughty_ now bore the brunt of the fight, and suffered severely. Everything that could be smashed on their decks was knocked to pieces, and the _Lee_ was hit badly in several places at and below the water-line. Woods, her boatswain, informed her commander, Lieutenant Jones, that unless the shot-holes could be plugged she would sink, as her pumps and donkey engine could not get the water out as fast as it came in. “Well, then, we must sink,” said the lieutenant; “you can’t get at the worst of the holes from inside, and I’m not going to order a man to go over the side with the tide running down like this, and our propeller going.” But Woods replied by promptly volunteering to go over the side and see what he could do. His commander warned him that the screw must be kept going, or the ship would drift out of her place--so, besides the chance of drowning, he would risk being killed by the propeller blades; but Woods, remarking that the chance of being killed was much of a muchness anywhere just then, went over the side, with a line round his waist and a supply of shot-plugs and rags in his hands, and, diving again and again, and more than once sweeping down with the tide under the stern and rising just clear of the wash of the screw, he successfully plugged several shot-holes. But for all that the ship continued to fill, and before long had to give up her place in the fight and run aground to prevent her sinking. The _Cormorant_ replaced the _Lee_, the admiral, by his own request, being seated in a chair on her deck. He had already once fainted, and the doctors now persuaded him to allow them to send him to the hospital ship on the bar, and Captain Shadwell, the next senior officer, took the command of the attack. At half-past five, when the battle had lasted three hours, the _Kestrel_ sank at her anchors. Of the eleven gunboats, six were disabled or put out of action. But the fire of the Chinese batteries was slackening, and at 6.30, after a hurried council of war on board the _Cormorant_, it was resolved to bring in the marines and sailors who had been waiting in boats and junks inside the bar to act as a landing party, and try to carry the South Fort by a bold rush. It was after seven, and very little daylight was left for the daring attempt, when the boats were towed in by the _Opossum_ and the _Toey ’Wan_, a little Chinese steamer. Captain Shadwell took command of the landing party, which was made up of bluejackets under Captain Vansittart, and Commanders Heath and Commerell, R.N. Sixty French sailors, under Commander Tricault, of the French frigate _Duhalya_, the marines under Colonel Lemon, and a party of sappers with scaling-ladders, under Major Forbes, R.E.