ral guns. My men kept falling off one by one; and when I arrived at
the edge of the ditch, which appeared wide and deep, and was assisting
the men with the bridge, I received a matchlock ball, which entered over
the right eye, and passed out over the left. This tumbled me, my
forehead literally hanging over my nose, and the wound bleeding
profusely. I was at this time close to our gallant Captain Lindsay, who,
at the same moment, received a ginjall ball[10] in the right knee, which
shattered the bone to pieces. I recovered a little from the stun of my
wound, when, the first thing that met my eye--for I could only see with
one--was the bamboo bridge quietly gliding down the stream, being some
yards too short. Nothing but killed and wounded could be seen, and there
was not the most distant chance of getting in. To have attempted
crossing the ditch would have been an act of madness. In descending we
must have plunged over our heads in water; and they had two small guns
bearing on the spot. At last a retreat was ordered. Previous to this,
our poor fellows stood like sheep to be shot at, without the remotest
hope of success. The camels and elephants, alarmed by the tremendous
firing and shouting, could not be induced to approach the fort, many of
them throwing their loads and running back to camp, and wild into the
woods. Seven hundred men were killed and wounded on this occasion. Our
brave Captain Lindsay's wound was so bad that his leg was amputated in
the battery. My wound was a dangerous one, having touched the bone. I
was immediately sent home to camp, where I lay completely blind for
several days. This, added to our disastrous defeat, threw me into a
fever, and nearly cost me my life; but, with the aid of a kind
Providence, and the advantage of a strong and unimpaired constitution, I
soon recovered.

Our engineer now gave up this side of the fort as perfectly hopeless,
and we went more to the eastward, breaching a prominent bastion; but the
whole fort was so constructed that one part protected the others; and
therefore, wherever we breached we were sure of a destructive
cross-fire. From our melancholy failures, our poor fellows became
disheartened; scarcely a man had escaped without being wounded, and the
sad recollection of their poor comrades that were left behind in a
mutilated state, was the constant topic of conversation. Our
mortification was greatly increased by seeing our men's clothing paraded
on the ramparts,