Eight boats abreast, we dashed into the bay.
The earl selected a landing-place where the evergreen mangroves dipped their branches in the dancing ripples that ran in silver foam upon the black volcanic rocks, and where the beach of the creek was covered by layers of those beautiful shells of silver, blue, and rose colour, the conch used of old by the savage Carib as a trump for war, and those marked by musical notes and used—as the buccaneer traditions tell—by the mermaids (and spirits of women drowned at sea) when singing. There, too, lay the mother-of-pearl oysters, which, says an old writer, usually lie at the foot of the great rocks, appearing at sunrise above the water "to gape for the clew, and when they have received a drop, closing their shells, and sinking down again."
At the moment our leading line of boats grounded, the clear sky on both sides of the little bay became filled with curved lines of vertical light, as a storm of rockets, ascending from Fort Gosier on one side, and La Fleur d'Epée on the other, rushed like meteors of fire far aloft, and exploding, fell in showers of twinkling stars, the descent of which, enabled the French gunners on the batteries to direct their shot against us.
A large shell from La Fleur d'Epée (the strongest fortress in Guadaloupe) came revolving and humming through the air; we could trace its course by the lighted fuse.
"Stoop!" cried the earl; "down, lads, down!"
It fell harmlessly into the water alongside of the Duke of Kent's boat; a second that came, exploded near our company. We saw the brilliant flash among the dark mangrove leaves, while a blaze of red sparks was thrown upward; at the same instant a wild cry of agony announced that at least one poor fellow had fallen by a splinter, and Harry Smith, the aide-de-camp, lost an epaulette by a cannon-ball, which wounded his shoulder.
These little hints to be speedy were not lost upon us. We formed with the utmost rapidity by companies and by regiments, and moved beyond some ridges which saved us from the fire of the two forts. I remember stumbling in the dark over the prostrate body of a naval officer, who was severely wounded by the splinter of a shell. This was the eldest son of the Earl of Galloway, "Captain Lord Viscount Garlies, of the Winchelsea frigate, who," as Admiral Jervis states in his despatch, "acquitted himself with spirit (in the landing) although he received a bad contusion from the fire of a battery, against which he had placed his ship in the good old way, within half-musket shot."
In the clear tropical night we could perceive that Fort Fleur d'Epée was strongly situated on the summit of a hill; and we advanced towards it through a gorge, Sir George Grey, of the Boyne, leading the naval brigade, and General Dundas the troops. His orders were that in carrying the place by storm we we were to trust entirely to the bayonet—the seamen and marines to pike and cutlass—and that no time was to be lost in firing.
The morning gun from the Boyne, which lay at anchor in Gosier Bay, was to be the signal for attack, and while the general was indicating the various points from which it would be made, and getting our forces into position, Captain Glendonwyn and I were sent forward with a flag of truce to summon the fort to surrender.
Through a thicket, amid the foliage of which the fireflies were flitting in and out of sight, we made our way to the base of the hill, and when within musket-shot desired our drummer to beat a parley. The sound was immediately answered by a drum within the fort, and we proceeded over a bridge, beneath which a waterfall was pouring like a torrent of liquid silver. From thence we passed through an alley in an orange-grove, the old trees of which were interwoven by an all but impenetrable mass of green tracery—the fibres and foliage of the creepers that clung from branch to branch. There, too, crawled and croaked the crapaud, or huge brown toad, the aspect of which was enough to fill with qualms even those, who in less than half an hour, would be rushing on with the desperate stormers.