ul, and the place being set on fire the
garrison surrendered.

The Convention redoubt was the next place to be attacked. It was fortified
in a most formidable manner, and indeed was so strongly constructed as to
withstand any ordinary attack. A short distance away, however, was a rock
rising seven hundred feet above the level of the sea, which entirely
commanded it. This the enemy had left unfortified and unguarded because
they believed it was inaccessible. In many places it was almost
perpendicular, and though there was a path leading to the summit, this was
in very few places wide enough to allow more than one person to ascend at
a time. Admiral Hood in person reconnoitred and decided that a battery
could be formed on the summit.

The next day Will was on shore in command of a party of thirty men who
were to start getting up the guns. The sailors looked at the rock and at
the guns in dismay.

"La, Mr. Gilmore," one of them said, "we can never get them up there! In
the first place it is too steep, and in the second it is too rough. It
would take two hundred men to do it, and even they would not be much good,
for the path winds and twists so much that they could not put their
strength on together."

Will looked at the path, and at the hill on which the new battery was to
be formed.

"You see, sir," another said, "the path would have to be blasted in lots
of places to make room for the guns, and we have got no tools for the
job."

Will did not answer. He saw that what the men said was correct. Presently,
however, his eye fell upon an empty rum puncheon, and at once his thoughts
flashed back to the West Indies.

"Wheel that puncheon here, men."

Much surprised, the men did as they were ordered.

"Now knock out both ends, and when you have tightened the hoops again,
fill the barrel about a third full with sticks, grass, bits of wood,
anything you can come across."

The men scattered at once to collect the ballast, with some doubts in
their minds as to whether the midshipman had not gone out of his senses.
In about fifteen minutes they had carried out his instructions.

"Dismount the gun," he then ordered, "and put it inside the barrel."

When this had, with some difficulty, been accomplished, and the barrel
surrounded the centre of the gun, he said: "Now fill up the barrel with
the rest of that rubbish."

The sailors had now caught the idea, and very soon they had the gun
tightly packed into its novel carr