Had all things been relatively equal, the Americans within the lines, according to military experience, should have been well able to hold that front. But there was a total inequality of conditions. The enemy were thoroughly equipped, disciplined, and provided for. They were an army of professional soldiers, superior to any that could be brought against them the world over. Thus far they had carried everything before them, and were eager to achieve still greater victories. Behind the Brooklyn works stood a poorly armed, badly officered, and for the most part untrained mass of men, hurriedly gathered into the semblance of an army. The events of the previous day, moreover, had greatly depressed their spirits. Not a few of those who had been engaged in or witnessed the battle were badly demoralized. To make matters worse, the very elements seemed to combine against them. The two days they were still to remain on the island were days of "extraordinary wet." It rained almost continuously, and much of the time heavily. No fact is better attested than this. August 28th, writes Colonel Little, "weather very rainy;" "29th, very rainy." Major Tallmadge speaks of the fatigue as having been aggravated by the "heavy rain." "The heavy rain which fell two days and nights without intermission, etc.," said the council which voted to retreat. Pastor Shewkirk in his diary notes the weather particularly: "Wednesday 28th," he writes, ... "in the afternoon we had extraordinary heavy rains and thunder." The flashes of the cannons were intermixed with flashes of lightning. On the 29th, "in the afternoon, such heavy rain fell again as can hardly be remembered." To all this deluge our soldiers were exposed with but little shelter. Necessity required that they should be at the lines, and constantly on the watch, ready to repel any attempt to storm them. When they lay down in the trenches at brief intervals for rest, they kept their arms from the wet as they could. Cooking was out of the question, and the men were compelled to take up with the unaccustomed fare of hard biscuits and raw pork. Their wretched plight is referred to in more than one of the letters of the day. Writes General Scott: "You may judge of our situation, subject to almost incessant rains, without baggage or tents, and almost without victuals or drink, and in some part of the lines the men were standing up to their middles in water." Captain Olney puts it on record that "the rain fell in such torrents that the water was soon ankle deep in the fort. Yet with all these inconveniences, and a powerful enemy just without musket-shot, our men could not be kept awake." Captain Graydon, of Shee's Pennsylvanians, says in his well-known "Memoirs:" "We had no tents to screen us from the pitiless pelting, nor, if we had them, would it have comported with the incessant vigilance required to have availed ourselves of them, as, in fact, it might be said that we lay upon our