Lieutenant-Commander B. F. Adams, leading a party of seamen, stormed the Mole immediately the gangways were placed. The only two gangways which could reach the Mole were, to say the least of it, very unsteady platforms. Their inboard ends were rising and falling several feet as the ship rolled; the outer ends were see-sawing and sliding backwards and forwards on the top of the wall. My own personal impression at the time was that these gangways were alternately lifting off and resting on the wall, but apparently that was not so. The fact remains, however, that the run across these narrow gangways with a thirty-foot drop beneath to certain death was not altogether inviting. {188} The first act of the advance party, in accordance with the instructions, was to secure the ship to the wail by means of the grappling anchors. A great struggle to do this was undertaken. The foremost grappling anchors only just reached the Mole. Some men sat on the top of the wall and endeavoured to pull the grapnels over the top as they were lowered from the ship. These grapnels, by virtue of the use for which they were designed, were heavy. That fact, combined with the continuous rolling of the ship, made it exceedingly difficult to control them. Rosoman and a party of men on board joined in the struggle, but a heavy lurch of the ship broke up the davit on which the foremost grappling iron was slung and the latter fell between the ship and the wall. Adams' party were followed out in great style by the remainder of the seamen storming parties led by their surviving officers, and then by the Marines. I propose to tell later of what occurred on the Mole itself in so far as I have been able to gather from the parties concerned. [Sidenote: Work of the _Daffodil_] As soon as it was clear that the grappling anchors had failed us owing to the heavy swell there was no other alternative than to order _Daffodil_ to carry on pushing throughout the proceedings. A curious incident which has never been explained occurred just previously. Some individual in _Vindictive_ had hailed _Daffodil_ and called to them to shove off, "By whose orders?" came the response shouted by Campbell from _Daffodil's_ bridge. "Captain Halahan's orders," was the reply. As a matter of fact poor gallant Halahan had been killed some ten minutes earlier. "I take my orders from Captain Carpenter," {189} shouted Campbell. "He's dead," was shouted back. "I don't believe it," responded Campbell, and incidentally he was right, though I have not the faintest idea what he based his belief on. As Mark Twain would have said, "the report of my death was much exaggerated." The incident was certainly curious, but of course (this for the benefit of those who, during the war, saw spies and traitors at every corner) there can only be the explanation that some poor wounded fellow must have been delirious.