The street of Tarifa immediately behind the breach was fourteen feet beneath its level. Every preparation was made to receive the assault, the houses that commanded the breach being fortified and garrisoned, the street effectually barricaded, and the troops carefully distributed. To the 47th and Spaniards the defence of the breach was entrusted--the 87th held the portcullis, tower, and rampart; while a rifle company connected the regiments with each other. Although for sixty feet the breach was open, and offered an easy ascent, the French did not venture to storm. At night, salvos of grape were fired by the French batteries--but in the intervals between the discharges, the garrison cleared the foot of the breach, and enlarged their means of defence behind it. On the night of the 30th, a tremendous rain increased the river to such a height, that the torrent, sweeping all before it, broke down the palisades and injured the portcullis. But this calamity did not daunt the British; they laboured vigorously all night, and by morning the defences were restored. The mountain flood subsided quickly, and at daylight, a battalion of French grenadiers quietly approached by the river bed, and rushed forward to break down the stockade. Not a shot had been fired by the British, who waited their approach with perfect coolness; but when they touched the portcullis, a rolling volley was delivered with such terrible effect, that the head of the column was annihilated, and all that composed it perished, from the officer that led, to the poor drum-boy who beat the _pas de charge_. The river bed was choked with corpses--that approach was effectually barricaded by the dead,--while rushing up the banks, the French grenadiers opened their musketry, assisted by a fire from the trenches, and a number of pits in front of their lines, which had been dug by Laval to afford a cover for his sharpshooters. But the column had been too much shattered by the first discharge to recover its courage--a sustained fire of British musketry, closely and efficiently kept up, cut off the boldest of the French soldiers who still made any thing like an effort at advancing-- while a six-pounder on the town wall, enfiladed the assailants at scarcely pistol distance, and kept up an unceasing torrent of grape, that tore up the masses of the enemy, and drove them once more for shelter to the hollow. It was hopeless to continue longer under this murderous fire--and the French retired at speed to their trenches, leaving the bed and banks of the stream heaped with corpses; while the cheering of the garrison, and the band of the 87th, as it struck up a national quickstep, strangely contrasted with the groans of dying men, and the still more harrowing outcries of the wounded.