A supply of gunpowder having been obtained from Sir Home Popham’s squadron, a second mine was completed: the first breach was rendered practicable, and the explosion which made the second was the signal for assaulting both. Immediately before the explosion, and while in the act of communicating that all was ready, Lieutenant-Colonel Jones of the engineers was severely wounded, an officer whose Journals of the Sieges, and whose general Account of the War have been the most useful as well as the most trust-worthy of the printed authorities from which the present history has been composed. About an hundred feet of the wall were thrown down by the explosion: the storming party, instead of being composed of detachments from different regiments, consisted of the 24th regiment, supported by the working and covering parties in the trenches, a reserve of 500 men having also been formed in the parallel. This assault was made in the face of day. The officer who led the left party was at the foot of the old breach before the smoke had cleared away, and he was the first man on the top of it; and the dust had scarcely subsided before the troops had gained the summit of both breaches, and driven the enemy into their covered way, and behind their new palisades. During the night the besiegers established themselves in both breaches, and along the wall to the left of them, and began an approach towards the second line of works. But the rains now began to set in heavily; and on the following afternoon 300 of the garrison made a sortie from their covered way, gained possession of the first breach, and retained it long enough to ruin the lodgment and carry off the tools. They did not get possession of the second breach, nor of the parallel along the parapet: but the advantage which they had gained was sufficient to encourage them, and to lessen the confidence of the besiegers, who could not but perceive that they were struggling against all advantages of situation, and with means the most inadequate. The enemy could not depress their guns so as to bear upon the new works, but they kept up a constant fire of musketry upon them, and from time to time rolled large shells down the steep glacis, and these either carried away the gabion where the men were breaking ground in the night, or lodging against it and bursting, blew it to pieces. The rain was now so heavy that much time was daily expended in draining and keeping the communications up the steep banks and breaches practicable. The garrison meantime were never idle: they had now disabled two of the three 18-pounders; and making another sortie at two in the morning of the 8th, from the covered way with 400 men, they surprised the advanced covering party, drove the remainder from the parallel of the outer line, and once more levelled the work and ♦MAJOR COCKS KILLED.♦ carried off the tools. Major Cocks was killed in a charge to regain it: he was shot through the body when ascending the breach, by a French infantry