With these words the General left them, and the columns moved on through the wood, in the order he had signified to them. They had now possessed themselves of better guides, and they were thus enabled to make their march more direct, and as they had already cleared their front of enemies, the leading troops were soon up at the entrenchments. Here they were surprised to find a regular breast work, nine or ten feet high, strongly defended with wall-pieces, and having a very impregnable chevaux de frise, whilst the whole ground in front was every where strewed thickly over with huge newly felled oak trees, for the distance of about a cannon-shot from the walls. From behind the chevaux de frise, the enemy, in strong force, commenced a most galling and destructive fire upon the assailants, so as to render the works almost unapproachable, without certain destruction, especially without the artillery, which, from some accident, had not as yet been brought up. But the very danger they had to encounter seemed to give the British troops a more than human courage. Regardless of the hail-storm of bullets discharged on them, with deliberate aim, from behind the abattis, whilst they were fighting their laborious and painful way through the labyrinth of fallen trunks and branches that opposed their passage, they continued, column after column, to advance, dropping and thinning fearfully as they went. The Highlanders beheld this slaughter that the enemy was making of their friends--their blood boiled within them. In vain Colonel Grant and Major Campbell galloped backwards and forwards, along the line, using every command and every argument that official authority or reason could employ to restrain and to sooth them, till their time for action should arrive. With one tremendous shout, they rushed forward from the reserve, and cutting their way through the trees with their claymores, they were soon shewing their plumed crests among the very foremost ranks of the assailants. But so murderous was the fire that fell upon them, that their black tufted bonnets were seen dropping in all directions, never to be again raised by the brave heads that bore them. Their loss, before they gained the outward defences of the fort, was fearful; but the onset of those who survived was so overwhelming, that it drove the enemy from these outworks, and compelled them to retreat within the body of the fort itself.