It must not be thought that General Elliot had made no provision against the coming storm. He was a man fertile in expedients, and it would appear that his engineer-officers were as able as they were zealous; so that at all the exposed points new works of great strength were thrown up, and the fortifications were everywhere repaired and put in order. A fleet of gunboats was got ready in the Bay; a body of Corsicans, under the leadership of a nephew of the celebrated Paoli, had arrived to offer their services; and some vessels loaded with ammunition had run the blockade, and refilled the magazines of the fortress. The garrison reposed the most absolute confidence in their commander, and after so protracted a siege had come to think of themselves as invincible. Nor was their confidence lessened by the news which reached them of Admiral Rodney’s great victory over a French fleet in the West Indies. For some time the governor had looked on very calmly at the new works raised by the Spaniards across the isthmus and along the shore, but as they had been pushed forward to an inconvenient position, he thought the moment had come for administering [Illustration: LARBOARD AND STARBOARD SIDES OF A SPANISH BATTERING-SHIP. (_From on Old Engraving._) _Page 70._ ] a stern rebuke. He therefore opened upon them a cannonade of red-hot shot, which in a few hours involved the greater portion in flames. This contemptuous demonstration so annoyed the Duke of Crillon, that, though his lines were incomplete, he ordered a general bombardment. It began with a volley of about sixty shells from the mortar boats; then all his artillery, numbering one hundred and seventy pieces of heavy calibre, joined in the _feu d’enfer_; while nine line-of-battle ships hurled their broadsides as they sailed along the sea-front. The attack was repeated on the following day, in the hope apparently of terrifying the garrison by revealing the formidable nature of the preparations made for their destruction. While the air echoed with the hurtling missiles, the astonished soldiers saw through the occasional gaps in the smoke-clouds a vast press of sail coming up from the westward; it proved to be the combined fleets of France and Spain. Such an accumulation of force, by land and sea, could not fail to surprise, though it did not alarm, Elliot and his veterans. The armada, beneath which, to use the expression of an old poet, “the waters groaned,” consisted of 47 sail of the line, and 10 battering-ships, regarded as impregnable and invincible, carrying 212 guns, besides frigates, xebecs, bomb-ketches, cutters, gun and mortar boats, and smaller craft for disembarking men. On the land-side the batteries and works were of the most formidable character, mounting 200 pieces of heavy ordnance, and protected by an army of nearly 40,000 men, under the command of a general of experience and ability, and animated by the presence of two princes of the royal