While Commodore Howe sent a bomb-ketch to anchor close off the town, with orders to pitch a few shells into it from time to time, and thus amuse or decoy the officer in command there, the British forces landed three miles westward of Querqueville, the most western fort of the bay. During the disembarkation several other bomb-ketches shelled the line of intrenchments not only with explosives of the usual kind, but from mortars loaded with musket balls, thus making great slaughter with little or no risk to us. As on the former occasion the flat-bottomed boats were hoisted out, and the three regiments of guards, with the grenadier company of every battalion on board the fleet, were first rowed ashore, and formed in line upon a portion of the beach that was flat and open. Each boat contained eighteen seamen and fifty grenadiers, and had a red flag displayed at its stern. Beyond the landing place opened a grassy hollow, with a pretty village that crowned a steep eminence on the right flank; on the left were thick green hedges enclosing orchards laden with fruit of the most brilliant yellow and crimson colours, and amid these were seen the serried files and glittering bayonets of the enemy. This was a beautiful evening, when the summer sun of Normandy covered all the fertile land and rippling sea with warm light, and bathed in purple tints the undulating ridges of the Mont-du-Roule and of the Boc-au-chat, while the waves that washed the sloping bastions of Cherbourg, of Fort Royal, and those on the Isle Pelee, or those that broke in foam on the rocks of St. Anne, seemed billows of liquid gold. Puff--puff--puff--came the white smoke out from the green hedgerows and glowing orchards, as the foe opened a running fire of musketry, under which our grenadiers and Guards formed line, and rushing forward with fixed bayonets and a hearty hurrah, drove in the French out-pickets and stormed a breast-work that lay across the hollow way beyond the beach. So rapid was the advance, that in this encounter there were only three privates killed and seventeen wounded; while _three hundred_ of the enemy were killed or wounded, and among the former was a Captain Macartney of the Irish Brigade, in whose pocket Hob Elliot of ours, "found a letter," as the newspapers stated, "from a lady in London, dated on the 30th ultimo, assuring him that we were about to pay France a visit, and giving a particular account of our strength."