When daylight came in next morning, the firing again commenced as warmly as the preceding day; and the precision the French had attained with their shot was very remarkable. We had a flag-staff of the usual size, on which was hoisted the Spanish colours. They had cut it across with a cannon ball, it was repaired, and again replaced; but it was not five minutes up, when another shot brought it down again. This occurring four or five times successively, gave great offence to the sailors, who attributed all that we had suffered to fighting under the Spanish flag, and swore that if the union jack were up in its place, the French would not bring it down so easily. ‘There’s that bloody Spanish flag down again,’ said one of the tars. ‘Look ye, Jack! I have got our boat’s ensign here—let me go, and I’ll soon run it up.’ He went, and assisted in repairing the flag staff; but instead of again bending the Spanish flag to the halliards, he put the English in place of it. A general huzza greeted its appearance. ‘Now, hang it! we’ll beat the French dogs,’ said the seamen; but the cheering attracted the notice of the commandant, and he ordered it to be hauled down again. Never was an order so reluctantly obeyed. In a few minutes, a shot cut through the flag staff. ‘There it goes down again—Oh, botheration;’ was the surly reply. ‘Let it lie there;’ and there it lay, for no one would meddle with it. ‘Better to fight without a flag at all, than under such a bloody treacherous flag as that,’ said an old sailor. ‘I never could bear it, unless when I saw it flying at the mast head of an enemy.’ By this time three of our guns were rendered unfit for service, and they had made great impression on our parapet, with a breach in the end of the bomb-proof. A corporal of our grenadier company had gone below to get some refreshment, and was raising a tin with some wine in it to his mouth, when a shot entered the breach, and striking some small arms that were placed against the wall, shivered them to pieces. One of the splinters entered his head, and he fell dead on the spot. The rest wounded several of the men beside him. A shell fell about the same time at the magazine door. A blanket was the only partition between it and the powder. We were sure all was over,—that it was impossible but that the magazine would be blown up. We stood in awful suspense for the few seconds between its fall and bursting—it burst—and already we imagined ourselves in the air; but fortunately, it did not communicate with the powder. There were two artillery men in the magazine at the time, whose feelings could not be very enviable. In the course of the morning, General Stewart came over from Cadiz to inspect the state of the fort, when it was found that it could not stand out much longer. A reinforcement of men from different regiments was sent over to assist us, in case of the enemy attempting to storm us in our disabled state, but we received little assistance from them.