to it.

One ran forward to see if it was charged, and brought back news that it
was not. Lieutenant Knight and the little party of sailors worked
desperately to pull down the props that supported the roof of the
gallery, but they had little time allowed them for doing so. Had it not
been that the noise made by the Turks had given the alarm so long before
they reached the spot the work might have been completed. As it was,
they had performed but a small portion of it when an officer ran in to
say that they must at once come up, as the party could no longer keep
back the swarming throng of the enemy. Colonel Douglas, who was in
command, cheered on his hardly-pressed men, who had found the resistance
of the French so desperate that they had been unable to drive them out
from their advanced trench.

Lieutenant Knight, exhausted by the loss of blood, and his efforts to
aid the pioneers, had to be assisted from the gallery and carried off by
the seamen. Major Oldfield, who commanded the marines of _Theseus_, was
killed, with two of his men. Mr. Janverin, midshipman of the _Tigre_,
and eleven men were wounded. Beatty, and Forbes, a midshipman of the
_Theseus_, were both slightly wounded, as were five marines of that
ship, and a seaman and two marines of the _Alliance_. As soon as the
party began to draw off, a heavy fire was opened on the French by the
Turkish troops on the wall. The batteries opened with renewed vigour,
while the bugles sounded to order the retreat of the two Turkish corps.
All gained the gates unmolested. The Turks were in high spirits.
According to their custom at the time, they had cut off the heads of
their fallen foes and brought in sixty of these trophies.

The French loss had been considerably greater, for from the desperate
nature of the fighting the Turks had been unable to decapitate the
greater part of their fallen foes. In addition to the heads they also
brought in a great number of muskets and some intrenching tools. The
last were an extremely valuable prize, as the garrison had been much
hampered in their work by the small number of available picks and
shovels. Although, so far as the main object of the sortie, it had been
a failure, the result was, upon the whole, a satisfactory one. The Turks
had met the French in fair fight, and had held their own against them,
and they were so pleased that during the rest of the siege they never
once wavered. The attack, too, showed the French that their e