On coming up the ramparts, I found that all the men had left the fort, with the exception of three or four, and the commandant. He was watching the motions of a strong party of French who were evidently coming down to take the place. Our ammunition was expended, but he ordered all the loose powder, grape, and ball cartridge to be collected, and having stuffed three guns (all we had left fit for service) to the muzzle with them, we watched the enemy until within about two hundred yards of the battery, when they were fired into the very middle of their column, and laid the half of them prostrate on the earth; the rest wheeled to the right about and left us to embark at leisure. A number of the men, who had been killed, were lying on the ramparts. Some of them of the same regiment to which I belonged. We resolved on giving them some sort of burial, as the last kind office we could perform. We gathered them into a temporary hut, which had been built of mud, and, throwing it down over them, ‘Sleep there, brave comrades!’ said we: ‘far distant, and ignorant of your fate, is the wife or mother who would have composed your mangled limbs.’ Hurried and rude was their burial, and a heart-felt sigh all their requiem, but it was more valuable than the ostentatious trappings of affected woe. We then hurried down to the boats; they were all gone but one, and after entering, I learned from my comrades that two men of the party who had come to reinforce us had got themselves so beastly drunk that they could not stir, and had been left behind. We were not a great distance from the fort when it blew up, but only partially. The French were still firing, and one of the shells falling into a boat, which preceded us, burst and killed three men, besides wounding others. We were taken by the boats on board of the Invincible seventy-four, where we were very kindly treated; from that we were conveyed to Cadiz. The regiment I belonged to had removed to Isla Camp, but we were marched up to our old barracks in the bomb-proof, and a motley-looking group we were. Half naked, and blackened with the smoke of the gunpowder, we looked more like chimney-sweepers than soldiers. We were received very coolly by the Spaniards. They did not seem to feel any commiseration for us on account of what we had suffered. I imagined their looks expressed vexation rather at any of us escaping alive.