er, of high-sniffing,
angry, not too magnanimous turn);--and withdraws now to his Ships;
intimating: 'Do your Problem, then; I have set you down beside it, which
was my part of the affair!'--Let us give the attack of Fort Lazar, and
end this sad business.

"Sunday, 16th April, Wentworth, once master of the Uppermost Lake or
Harbor (what the Natives call the SURGIDERO, or Anchorage Proper),
had disembarked, high up to the right, a good way south of Carthagena;
meaning to attack there-from a certain Fort Lazar, which stands on a
Hill between Carthagena and him: this Hill and Fort once his, he has
Carthagena under his cannon; Carthagena in his pocket, as it were. 'Fort
not to be had without batteries,' thinks Wentworth; though the sickly
rainy season has set in. 'Batteries? Scaling-ladders, you mean!' answers
Vernon, with undisguised contempt. For the two are, by this time, almost
in open quarrel. Wentworth starts building batteries, in spite of the
rain-deluges; then stops building;--decides to do it by scalade, after
all. And, at two in the morning of this Sunday, April 16th, sets forth,
in certain columns,--by roads ill-known, with arrangements that do NOT
fit like clock-work,--to storm said Hill and Fort. The English are an
obstinate people; and strenuous execution will sometimes amend defects
of plan,--sometimes not.

"The obstinate English, nothing in them but sullen fire of valor, which
has to burn UNluminous, did, after mistake on mistake, climb the
rocks or heights of Lazar Hill, in spite of the world and Don Blas's
cannonading; but found, when atop, That Fort Lazar, raining cannon-shot,
was still divided from them by chasms; that the scaling-ladders had
not come (never did come, owing to indiscipline somewhere),--and that,
without wings as of eagles, they could not reach Fort Lazar at all!
For about four hours, they struggled with a desperate doggedness,
to overcome the chasms, to wrench aside the Laws of Nature, and do
something useful for themselves; patiently, though sulkily; regardless
of the storm of shot which killed 600 of them, the while. At length,
finding the Laws of Nature too strong for them, they descended gloomily:
'in gloomy silence' marched home to their tents again,--in a humor too
deep for words.

"Yes; and we find they fell sick in multitudes, that night; and, 'in two
days more, were reduced from 6,645 to 3,200 effective;' Vernon, from
the sea, looking disdainfully on:--and it became evident