The ladders were placed, the troops cheered and swarmed up, and nothing was heard but mingled cries of despair and shouts of victory. Several ladders broke down under the weight, and men were precipitated on the heads of their comrades below. “The ladder I mounted was, like many others, too short, and I found that no exertion I could make would enable me to reach the embrasure or descend. In this desperate state, expecting immediate death from the hands of a ferocious Frenchman in the embrasure, I heard a voice above call out: “‘Mr. ----, is that you?’ “‘Yes!’ I shouted. “The same voice cried out: ‘Oh, murther! murther! What will we do to get you up at all, at all, with that scrawdeen of a ladtherr? But here goes! Hould my leg, Pat!’ and, throwing himself flat on his face in the embrasure, he extended his brawny arm down the wall, seized me by the collar with the force of Hercules, and landed me, as he said himself, ‘clever and clane,’ on the ramparts. “In the same manner five more were landed. Thus did this chivalrous soldier, with noble generosity, prefer saving the lives of six of his comrades at the risk of his own to the rich plunder which everywhere surrounded him. And this was Tully O’Malley, a private in my company, one of the ‘ragged rascals.’ Well, I found myself standing amongst several French soldiers, who were crowding round the gun in the embrasure. One of them still held the match lighted in his hand, the blue flame of which gave the bronzed and sullen countenances of these warriors an expression not easily forgotten. “A Grenadier leaned on the gun and bled profusely from the head; another, who had fallen on his knees when wounded, remained fixed in astonishment and terror. Others, whose muskets lay scattered on the ground, folded their arms in deep despair. The appearance of the whole group, with their huge, bushy moustaches and mouths all blackened with biting the cartridges, presented to the eye of a young soldier a very strange and formidable appearance. “‘Don’t mind them boys, sorr,’ said Tully. ‘They were all settled jist afore you came up: and, by my soul, good boys they were for a start--fought like raal divils, they did, till Mr. S---- and the Grenadiers came powdering down on them with the war-whoop. Och, my darlint! they were made smiddreens of in a crack, barring that big fellow you see there, with the great black whiskers--see yonder--bleeding in the side, he is, and resting his head on the gun-carriage. Ah! he was the bouldest of them all. He made bloody battle with Jim Reilly; but ’tis short he stood afore our Jim, for he gave him a raal Waterford puck that tumbled him like a ninepin in a minute; and, by my own sowl, a puck of the butt-end of Jim’s piece is no joke, I tell you! He tried it on more heads than one on the hill of Busaco.’ “Away then flew Tully to join his company, forming in double-quick time to oppose the enemy, who were gathering in force at one of the gates of the citadel.”