Still the Picurina sent out streams of fire, by the light of which dark figures were seen furiously struggling on the ramparts; for Powis had escaladed in front where the artillery had broken the pales; and the other assailants, throwing their ladders in the manner of bridges from the brink of the ditch to the slanting stakes thus passed, and all were fighting hand to hand with the enemy. Meanwhile the axemen of the light division, compassing the fort like prowling wolves, discovered the gate, and hewing it down broke in by the rear. Nevertheless the struggle continued. Powis, Holloway, Gipps, and Oates fell wounded on or beyond the rampart, Nixon of the 52nd was shot two yards within the gate, Shaw, Rudd, and nearly all the other officers of the 79th had fallen outside, and it was not until half the garrison were killed, that Gaspar Thiery, the commandant, surrendered with eighty-six men, while others, not many, rushing out of the gate endeavoured to cross the inundation and were drowned. Phillipon had thought to delay the siege five or six days by the resistance of Picurina, and one day later this would have happened; for the mines and loop-holed gallery in the counterscarp would have been completed, and the work was too well covered by the glacis to be quickly ruined by fire. His calculations were baffled by this heroic assault, which, lasting only an hour, cost four officers and fifty men killed, fifteen officers and two hundred and fifty men wounded; and so vehement was the fight throughout, that the garrison forgot or had no time to roll over the shells and combustibles on the ramparts. Phillipon did not conceal the danger accruing to Badajos from the loss of the Picurina, but he stimulated his soldiers’ courage, by calling to their recollection, how infinitely worse than death it was to be the inmate of an English prison-hulk--an appeal which must have been deeply felt, for the annals of civilized nations furnish nothing more inhuman towards captives of war than the prison-ships of England. When Picurina was taken three battalions advanced to secure it, and though a great turmoil and firing from the town continued until midnight, a lodgement in the works and communication with the first parallel were established; the second parallel was also begun, but at daylight the redoubt was overwhelmed with fire, no troops could remain and the lodgement was destroyed. In the evening the sappers effected another lodgement on the flanks, the second parallel was then opened in its whole length, and next day the counter-batteries on the right of Picurina exchanged a vigorous fire with the town.