‘In less than five minutes the ship was alongside the Mole, and efforts were made to grapple the Mole, so as to keep the ship in place. The _Iris_ was ahead. The _Daffodil_, which was following close astern, came up and in the most gallant manner placed her bow against the _Vindictive_ and pushed the _Vindictive_ sideways, until she was close alongside the Mole. There was a very heavy swell against the Mole; the ships were rolling about, and this made the work of securing to the Mole exceedingly difficult.’ _Vindictive_ was specially fitted along the port side with a high false deck, from which ran eighteen brows or gangways, by which the storming parties were to land. The men were standing ready, but before the word was given a shell killed Colonel Bertram Elliot of the Marines, and Captain Henry Halahan (who was commanding the blue-jackets) fell to machine-gun fire. But no losses could stop the stormers. ‘When the brows were run out from the _Vindictive_, the men at once climbed out along them. It was an extremely perilous task, in view of the fact that the ends of the brows at one moment were from eight to ten feet above the wall, and the next moment were crashing on the wall as the ship rolled. The way in which the men got over those brows was almost super-human. I expected every moment to see them falling off between the Mole and the ship--at least a 30-feet drop--and being crushed by the ship against the wall. But not a man fell--their agility was wonderful. It was not a case of seamen running barefoot along the deck of a rolling ship; the men were carrying heavy accoutrements, bombs, Lewis guns and other articles, and their path lay along a narrow and extremely unsteady plank. (Of these plank brows only two were uninjured by the enemy’s fire; the rest were riddled.) They never hesitated; they went along the brows, and onto the Mole with the utmost possible speed. Within a few minutes three to four hundred had been landed, and under cover of a barrage put down on the Mole by Stokes guns and howitzer fire from the ships, they fought their way along.