All this time the tumult at the breaches was such as if the earth had been rent asunder and its central fires bursting upwards uncontrolled. The two divisions reached the glacis, just as the firing at the castle had commenced, and the flash of a single musket, discharged from the covered way as a signal, showed them the French were ready: yet no stir followed, and darkness covered the breaches. Some hay-packs were then thrown, some ladders placed, and the forlorn hopes and storming parties of the light division, five hundred in all, descended into the ditch without opposition: but then a bright flame, shooting upwards, displayed all the terrors of the scene. The ramparts crowded with dark figures and glittering arms were on one side, on the other the red columns of the British, deep and broad, coming on like streams of burning lava: it was the touch of the magician’s wand, a crash of thunder followed, and the storming parties were dashed to pieces by the explosion of hundreds of shells and powder-barrels. For an instant the light division soldiers stood on the brink of the ditch, amazed at the terrific sight, but then, with a shout that matched even the sound of the explosion they flew down the ladders, or, disdaining their aid, leaped, reckless of the depth, into the gulf below; and nearly at the same moment, amidst a blaze of musketry that dazzled the eyes, the fourth division came running in to descend with a like fury. There were only five ladders for both columns, which were close together, and the deep cut made in the bottom of the ditch, as far as the counterguard of the Trinidad was filled with water from the inundation: into this miry snare the head of the fourth division fell, and it is said above a hundred of the fusileers, the men of Albuera, were there smothered. Those who followed, checked not, but, as if the disaster had been expected, turned to the left and thus came upon the face of the unfinished ravelin, which, rough and broken, was mistaken for the breach and instantly covered with men; a wide and deep chasm was however still between them and the ramparts, from whence came a deadly fire wasting their ranks. Thus baffled, they also commenced a rapid discharge of musketry, and disorder ensued; for the men of the light division, whose conducting engineer had been disabled early, having their flank confined by an unfinished ditch, intended to cut off the Santa Maria, rushed towards the breaches of the curtain and the Trinidad, which were indeed before them, but which the fourth division had been destined to storm.