Warren, however, still urged Pepperrell to take some decisive step. Both fleet and army agreed that a night attack on the Island Battery was the best alternative to Warren's impracticable plan. Vaughan jumped at the idea, hoping to repeat in another way his success against the Royal Battery. He promised that, if he was given a free hand, he would send Pepperrell the French flag within forty-eight hours. But Vaughan was not to lead. The whole attack was entrusted to men who specially volunteered for it, and who were allowed to choose their own officers. A man called Brooks happened to be on the crest of the wave of camp popularity at the moment; so he was elected colonel for this great occasion. The volunteers soon began to assemble at the Royal Battery. But they came in by driblets, and most of them were drunk. The commandant of the battery felt far from easy. 'I doubt whether straggling fellows, three, four, or seven out of a company, ought to go on such service. They seem to be impatient for action. If there were a more regular appearance, it would give me greater sattysfaction.' His misgivings were amply justified; for the men whom Pepperrell was just beginning to form into bodies with some kind of cohesion were once more being allowed to dissolve into the original armed mob. The night of June 7 was dark and calm. A little before twelve three hundred men, wisely discarding oars, paddled out from the Royal Battery and met another hundred who came from Lighthouse Point. The paddles took them along in silence while they circled the island, looking for the narrow landing-place, where only three boats could go abreast between the destroying rocks on which the surf was breaking. Presently they found the tiny cove, and a hundred and fifty men landed without being discovered. But then, with incredible folly, they suddenly announced their presence by giving three cheers. The French commandant had cautioned his garrison to be alert, on account of the unusual darkness; and, at this very moment, he happened himself to be pacing up and down the rampart overlooking the spot where the volunteers were expressing their satisfaction at having surprised him so well.