Indies, an officer under whom he served has left this testimony to his worth, “that he was ever conspicuous in every service.” Determined upon relinquishing Porto Rico, Sir Ralph ordered Lieutenant C. Lefebure, of the royal engineers, with a detachment of the artificers, early in the morning of the 30th April, to repair to the bridge which connected the island of St. Julien with the Main and demolish it, for the purpose of preventing the Spaniards following and harassing the army during the retreat. The bridge was an old crazy structure of stone consisting of nine arches. All were directed to work at the road-way of the centre arch, but to private William Rogers, at his particular request, was assigned the difficult and dangerous duty of dislodging the key stone. The ground was soon harrowed up, a gap made across the middle, several stones were removed from the pier-heads, and the bridge exhibited signs of instability. Nothing daunted, Rogers boldly stepped upon the crown of the arch, and after a few heavy blows with his pickaxe, scooped the stone from its bed. At once the arch gave way; and the others leaning towards it, cracked as though torn by an earthquake and fell beneath him. Rogers’s situation was one of imminent peril, but with a fearlessness that was remarkable, he plunged from the crumbling bridge into the stream, and was fortunately preserved from any serious harm, whilst five of his comrades were crushed to death by the fall; four also were severely wounded; and all the rest, save corporal William Robinson, were injured. Nor was this all. Rogers swam about the heap to afford help to those who were suffering and dying. It was yet dark, and the thick dust still rising from the fall, made the darkness denser. Groping, therefore, among the ruins, he found an individual who still had signs of life, struggling, ineffectually, to free himself from some massive fragments that entangled him. Rogers set to work to release the drowning man: this he quickly accomplished, and, swimming with his charge to the shore, the rescued turned out to be his own officer—Lieutenant Lefebure. The life of that gallant subaltern, however, was only prolonged to fall a sacrifice to his heroism on the walls of Matagorda in 1810. Rogers’s exertions were not confined to his officer only, for several of his comrades who were precipitated into the water and were unable to swim, he saved, assisted by those of the party who had sustained but trivial injuries. A desolating epidemic still raged in the Caribbee Islands and greatly diminished the numbers of the company. In November particularly, the climate was extremely hot and unhealthy and the deaths by fever considerable. During the year the casualties were, deaths, thirty-one, of which fifteen occurred in November; sent home invalided, six; deserted, two; total, thirty-nine; leaving the company, of all ranks, only thirty-three strong at the end of the year.