w to proceed, and then led them into the battery,
where, while the main body silently divided and stole round, in the
shadow of the platform, to the guard-room door, about which they ranged
themselves, I and two others, whom I had especially picked for the
purpose, drew off our boots, and, in our stockinged feet, crept,
silently as shadows, up on to the gun platform, where each of us
crouched behind a gun waiting for a signal which I had arranged to give.
I selected as my victim the sentinel who mounted guard in the middle of
the platform, because he was the most difficult man to approach, the
other two being posted close to the head of the two flights of stone
steps, and I knew that by the time that I had reached him my men would
be quite ready.

The fellow stood close to the middle gun, on its lee side, and appeared
to be sheltering himself as well as he could from the wind and the rain
by crouching close to its carriage. His back was toward me. I
therefore had no difficulty whatever in approaching him, which I did in
a crouching attitude until I was near enough to touch the flapping
skirts of his coat. Then, drawing myself up to my full height and
taking a deep breath, I coughed loudly as a signal to my two men, at the
same instant clapping one hand over the sentinel's mouth and seizing his
musket in the other as I drove my knee into the small of his back and
bore him irresistibly to the ground.

"Utter no sound if you value your life!" I hissed in his ear, in
French; and whether it was that my caution was effective, or that the
poor fellow was too utterly surprised and astounded to speak, certain it
is that he lay perfectly quiet, with my knee on his breast and my hand
clutching his throat, while I carefully laid down the musket and drew a
gag and some line from my pocket wherewith to secure him. A subdued
scuffling to my right and left, scarcely audible above the rush of the
wind and the roar of the breakers on the outside beach, told me that the
other two sentinels were being similarly dealt with; but there was no
outcry whatever, and in less than five minutes we had all three of them
securely gagged, and bound hand and foot.

The next thing was to secure the remainder of the garrison, and this we
did without any difficulty, simply flinging open the guard-room door and
dashing in, cutlass and pistol in hand, upon the sleeping soldiers, and
seizing the muskets that stood neatly ranged in a rack along one of