to the order set down in the evening before by our General,
that the Vice-Admiral, accompanied with Captain Venner, Captain White,
and Captain Cross, with other sea captains, and with divers pinnaces
and boats, should give some attempt unto the little fort standing on the
entry of the inner haven, near adjoining to the town, though to small
purpose, for that the place was strong, and the entry, very narrow, was
chained over; so as there could be nothing gotten by the attempt more
than the giving of them an alarm on that other side of the haven, being
a mile and a-half from the place we now were at. In which attempt the
Vice-Admiral had the rudder of his skiff strucken through with a saker
shot, and a little or no harm received elsewhere.

The troops being now in their march, half-a-mile behither the town or
less, the ground we were on grew to be strait, and not above fifty paces
over, having the main sea on the one side of it and the harbour-water or
inner sea (as you may term it) on the other side, which in the plot is
plainly shewed. This strait was fortified clean over with a stone wall
and a ditch without it, the said wall being as orderly built, with
flanking in every part, as can be set down. There was only so much of
this strait unwalled as might serve for the issuing of the horsemen or
the passing of carriage in time of need. But this unwalled part was
not without a very good _barricado_ of wine-butts or pipes, filled with
earth, full and thick as they might stand on end one by another, some
part of them standing even within the main sea. This place of strength
was furnished with six great pieces, demiculverins and sakers, which
shot directly in front upon us as we approached. Now without this wall,
upon the inner side of the strait, they had brought likewise two great
galleys with their prows to the shore, having planted in them eleven
pieces of ordnance, which did beat all cross the strait, and flanked our
coming on. In these two galleys were planted three or four hundred small
shot, and on the land, in the guard only of this place, three hundred
shot and pikes.

They, in this their full readiness to receive us, spared not their shot
both great and small. But our Lieutenant-General, taking the advantage
of the dark (the daylight as yet not broken out) approached by the
lowest ground, according to the express direction which himself had
formerly given, the same being the sea-wash shore, where the water
was so