On the 24th the attack was recommenced with activity. The Chofre batteries were enlarged to contain forty-eight pieces, and two batteries for thirteen pieces were begun on the heights of Bartolomeo, designed to breach at seven hundred yards distance the faces of the left demi-bastion of the horn-work, that of St. John on the main front, and the end of the high curtain, for these works rising in gradation one above another were in the same line of shot. The approaches on the isthmus were now also pushed forward by the sap, but the old trenches were still imperfect, and before daylight on the 25th the French coming from the horn-work swept the left of the parallel, injured the sap, and made some prisoners before they were repulsed. On the night of the 25th the batteries were all armed on both sides of the Urumea, and on the 26th fifty-seven pieces opened with a general salvo, and continued to play with astounding noise and rapidity until evening. The firing from the Chofre hills destroyed the revêtement of the demi-bastion of St. John, and nearly ruined the towers near the old breach together with the wall connecting them; but at the isthmus, the batteries although they injured the horn-work made little impression on the main front from which they were too distant. Lord Wellington, present at this attack and discontented with the operation, now ordered a battery for six guns to be constructed amongst some ruined houses on the right of the parallel, only three hundred yards from the main front, and two shafts were sunk with a view to drive galleries for the protection of this new battery against the enemy’s mines, but the work was slow because of the sandy nature of the soil. At 3 o’clock in the morning of the 27th the boats of the squadron, commanded by lieut. Arbuthnot of the Surveillante and carrying a hundred soldiers of the ninth regiment under captain Cameron, pulled to attack the island of Santa Clara. A heavy fire was opened on them, and the troops landed with some difficulty, but the island was then easily taken and a lodgement made with the loss of only twenty-eight men and officers, of which eighteen were seamen.