For Sir John Moore there was nothing left now but to prepare to defend the position in front of the town till the fleet should come round. He quartered his army in Corunna and its suburbs; the reserve he posted at El Burgo, on the river Mero, the bridge of which he destroyed. He also sent an engineer officer with a party of sappers to blow up the bridge of Cambria. Some delay took place in the ignition of the mine, and he despatched Quentin Kennedy to the officer with an angry expostulation. Mortified by repeated failures elsewhere during the retreat, the officer was anxious to perform this duty effectually. He approached the mine to examine it, and at that moment it exploded! Quentin felt the earth shake beneath his feet; the arch of the bridge sprung upward like a huge lid; a column of dark earth, stones, and dust, spouted into the air to descend in ruins, bringing with them the mutilated fragments of the poor engineer officer, who was literally blown to pieces; but this was a mere squib when compared with the explosion of two magazines containing four thousand casks of powder, which were blown up on the 13th, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy. On this occasion, says an eye-witness, "there ensued a crash like the bursting forth of a volcano; the earth trembled for miles, the rocks were torn from their bases, and the agitated waters rolled the vessels as in a storm; a vast column of smoke and dust, shooting out fiery sparks from its sides, arose perpendicularly and slowly to a great height, and then a shower of stones and fragments of all kinds bursting out of it with a roaring sound, killed several persons who remained too near the spot. A stillness, only interrupted by the lashing of the waves on the shore, succeeded, and the business of the war went on." All this powder had been sent from England and left there, by the red-tapists of the time, to be destroyed thus, while more than once the armies of Britain and Spain had been before the enemy with their pouches empty! In Corunna, the jaded British had now breathing time, but the exulting French were still pouring on. Some of Moore's staff suggested that he should send a flag of truce to Soult and negotiate for permission to embark unmolested--a suggestion which his undaunted heart rejected with scorn and anger. "I rely on my own powers," said he, "for defying the enemy, and extricating with honour my troops from their perilous position."