The morning of the 31st broke heavily, a thick fog hid every object, and the besiegers’ batteries could not open until eight o’clock. From that hour a constant shower of heavy missiles was poured upon the besieged until eleven, when Robinson’s brigade getting out of the trenches passed through the openings in the sea-wall and was launched bodily against the breaches. While the head of the column was still gathering on the strand, about thirty yards from the salient angle of the horn-work, twelve men, commanded by a serjeant whose heroic death has not sufficed to preserve his name, running violently forward leaped upon the covered way with intent to cut the sausage of the enemy’s mines. The French startled by this sudden assault fired the train prematurely, and though the serjeant and his brave followers were all destroyed and the high sea-wall was thrown with a dreadful crash upon the head of the advancing column, not more than forty men were crushed by the ruins and the rush of the troops was scarcely checked. The forlorn hope had already passed beyond the play of the mine, and now speeded along the strand amidst a shower of grape and shells, the leader lieutenant Macguire of the fourth regiment, conspicuous from his long white plume his fine figure and his swiftness, bounded far ahead of his men in all the pride of youthful strength and courage, but at the foot of the great breach he fell dead, and the stormers went sweeping like a dark surge over his body; many died however with him and the trickling of wounded men to the rear was incessant. This time there was a broad strand left by the retreating tide and the sun had dried the rocks, yet they disturbed the order and closeness of the formation, the distance to the main breach was still nearly two hundred yards, and the French, seeing the first mass of assailants pass the horn-work regardless of its broken bastion, immediately abandoned the front and crowding on the river face of that work, poured their musketry into the flank of the second column as it rushed along a few yards below them; but the soldiers still running forward towards the breach returned this fire without slackening their speed. The batteries of the Monte Orgullo and the St. Elmo now sent their showers of shot and shells, the two pieces on the cavalier swept the face of the breach in the bastion of St. John, and the four-pounder in the horn-work being suddenly mounted on the broken bastion poured grape-shot into their rear.