On the 8th, the enemy raised one face of the eastern redoubt several fascines in height. The day following, Lieutenant Cuppage, of the Royal Artillery, was dangerously wounded on the Royal battery, from a splinter of a small shell, which burst immediately after being discharged from the rock gun above and in the rear of the Royal battery; this was the second accident of the same nature. On the 11th a frigate and xebec passed to the west, with six topsail vessels, supposed to be part of the late Minorca garrison. On the night of the 13th the enemy traced out a work within the western _place d’armes_ of the St. Carlos Battery, apparently with an intention of extending the epaulement. The firing on both sides was now considerably increased; that from the enemy amounted to about five hundred rounds in the twenty-four hours. In the course of the 25th a shot drove through the embrasures of one of the British batteries, took off the legs of two men, one leg of another, and wounded a fourth man in both legs; so that “four men had seven legs taken off and wounded by one shot.” The boy who was usually posted on the works where a large party was employed, to inform the men when the enemy were directing their guns towards them, had been chiding them for their disregard of his warnings, and had just turned his head towards the hostile lines, when he observed this shot on its dreadful path, and called to them to beware. Unfortunately, his caution was too late; the shot entered the embrasure, with the fatal result we have described. It is strange that this boy should have been so keen-sighted as to distinguish the enemy’s shot almost immediately after it quitted the gun. But another boy in the garrison possessed an equal, if not a superior sharpness of vision. Passing on to the 11th of April, we find that on that day the garrison obtained information as to the exact nature of the preparations which were being made for conquering their stubborn resistance. They learned that the Duke of Crillon was in command, with twenty thousand French and Spanish troops, in addition to those who had previously formed the besieging force; that the besieging operations were directed by Monsieur d’Arçon, an eminent French engineer; and that Admiral Don Buonaventura Moreno was prepared to support the attack with ten men-of-war, besides gunboats, mortar boats, floating batteries, and other vessels. Next day the enemy’s cannonade was of a peculiar character; from six in the morning until sunset a single gun or mortar was discharged every two or three minutes. Our British soldiers remarked that, as the day was the anniversary of the bombardment, the Spaniards were probably keeping it with prayer and fasting, and the minuteguns were intended to express their sorrow at the expenditure during the past twelvemonth of so many barrels of powder and rounds of cartridges without any result!