As the boats pulled in to the shore, the fire from the North Fort had ceased, and only an occasional shot was fired from the long rampart of the South Fort. The landing place was five hundred yards in front of the right bastion of this fort. The tide had fallen so far that it was not possible to get any nearer, and the column had to make its way across these five hundred yards of mud covered with weeds and cut up with ditches and pools, the ground being so soft in places that the men sank to their waists in it. And as the first boat’s crew landed on this mud bank, suddenly, to the surprise of everyone, the whole front of the South Fort burst into flame. The silence of its guns was only a clever _ruse_, to lure the British to a closer attack. Now every gun opened fire again, while the Chinese, regardless of the covering fire from the gunboats, crowded on to the crest of the rampart, and opened fire with small arms upon the landing party. As they struggled onwards to the river bank round shot and grape, balls from swivels and muskets, rockets, and even arrows, fell among them in showers. Captain Shadwell was one of the first to be wounded; Vansittart fell, with one leg shattered by a ball; dead and wounded men lay on all sides, and the wounded had to be carried back to the boats to save them from being smothered in the mud. Three broad ditches lay between the landing place and the fort. Not 150 men reached the second of these, and only fifty the third, which lay just below the rampart. Several of this gallant band were officers--Tricault, the Frenchman, Commerell and Heath, Parke and Hawkey of the Marines, and Major Forbes of the Engineers. Their cartridges were nearly all wet and useless, and they had only one scaling-ladder. It was reared against the rampart, and ten men were climbing up it, when a volley from above killed three and wounded five of them, and then the ladder was thrown down and broken. There was no help for it but to retire. It was now dark, but the Chinese burnt flaring blue lights and sent up rockets and fire-balls, and by their light fired on their retiring enemies. Sixty-eight men were killed and nearly 300 wounded, in the advance and retreat of the landing party. Several of the boats had been sunk, and many of the men had to wait up to their waists, and even their necks, in water, on the river’s brink, till they could be taken off. It was 1 a.m. before Commanders Heath and Commerell, the two last of the party, reembarked. Then the gunboats slipped down to the bar, a party being sent in next day to blow up or burn those of the grounded ships that could not be got off.