Many of the miserable wounded were destroyed under the falling walls, or buried, more or less, at a time when we could not spare a hand to extricate them: their cries were piteous, and their agonies frightful. The dead lay heaped up behind breastwork and banquette, and from the castle gutters the red blood was dropping on the sea-beaten rocks below; where the sea mews and cormorants flapped their wings and screamed over the sweltering corpses of the 101st. The artillerymen were almost annihilated, and their platforms were drenched in gore.
Though exhausted by the toil they had endured, the brave little band of survivors manned the breach, and remained under arms during the whole of a most tempestuous night, with that quiet cheerfulness, mingled with stern determination, which are the principal characteristics of our unmatched soldiery in times of peril. Towards midnight, Santugo (whom, with Lascelles, I had left in charge of the breach) aroused me from a nap I was snatching, rolled up in my cloak and ensconced under the lee side of a parapet.
"Signor, we have had an alert," said he; "a movement is taking place amongst the enemy: they will be in the breach in five minutes."
I hurried to the mighty rent in our fortifications, and saw the long and perilous route which an escalade had to ascend—a steep and uncertain pathway, jagged with rocks and covered with a thousand cart-loads of loose stones, mortar, and rubbish: it looked like a waterfall as it vanished down the rocks into the gloom and obscurity below. The sky was intensely dark, and though the wind howled and the sea hissed and roared on the bluff headlands, the night seemed calm and still after the battle-din of the past day.
A white mass, like a rolling cloud, was moving softly towards the breach, and Santugo was puzzled to account for the strange uniform; but I knew in a moment that it was an attack en chemise, and that the stormers were clad each in a white shirt: a garb sometimes adopted by the French when engaged in a night assault. Here our vigilance got the better of them.
The chemise is a short shirt, either with or without sleeves, worn over the accoutrements, reaching only to the flap of the cartridge-box; and is a very useful and necessary precaution, to prevent the stormers from mistaking each other in the darkness, horror, and confusion of a night assault.
Our drum (we had only one now) beat, and a volley of musketry was poured upon the breach from every point that commanded it. The flashes glared forth over the ruined parapets above and the loopholes of the case-mates below, while our artillerymen, now that they had no longer cannon to work, stood by the howitzer to sweep the breach, and showered rockets, hand-grenades, and red and blue lights on the advancing column. The bursting of the former retarded and confused them, while the lurid or ghastly glare of the latter shewed us how to direct our fire: many fireballs alighted on the rocks, and blazed furiously, shedding over everything floods of alternate crimson and blue light, which had a magnificent yet horrible effect.
"Vive la gloire! Avancez! avancez, mes enfants!" cried the officer who led a wing of the French 62nd, and a wild cheer burst from his soldiers. It was the brave young Vicomte de Chataillion who headed "the Lost Children," and I saw with regret that he must fail.
"Forward the howitzer, to sweep the breach!" cried I to the artillerymen, who were every second falling down, killed or wounded, into the gap, before the fire of the French. "Forward—depress the muzzle, and stand clear of the recoil!"
Loaded with a bag containing a thousand musket-balls, the howitzer was run forward to the breach, over which its yawning muzzle was depressed and pointed.