On another hill, much to the northward, and consequently, further inland, the French had erected a battery of six 24-pounders.  This agreeable neighbour was only three hundred yards from us; and, allowing short intervals for the guns to cool, this battery kept up a constant fire upon us from daylight till dark.  I never could have supposed, in my boyish days, that the time would arrive when I should envy a cock upon Shrove Tuesday; yet such was my case when in this infernal castle.  It was certainly not giving us fair play; we had no chance against such a force; but my captain was a knight-errant, and as I had volunteered, I had no right to complain.  Such was the precision of the enemy’s fire, that we could tell the stone that would be hit by the next shot, merely from seeing where the last had struck, and our men were frequently wounded by the splinters of granite with which the walls were built, and others picked off like partridges, by the Swiss corps on the hill close to us.

Our force in the castle consisted of a hundred and thirty English seamen and marines, one company of Spanish, and another of Swiss troops in Spanish pay.  Never were troops worse paid and fed, or better fired at.  We all pigged in together; dirty straw and fleas for our beds; our food on the same scale of luxury; from the captain downwards there was no distinction.  Fighting is sometimes a very agreeable pastime, but excess “palls on the sense:”  and here we had enough of it, without what I always thought an indispensable accompaniment, namely, a good bellyful; nor did I conceive how a man could perform his duty without it; but here I was forced, with many others, to make the experiment, and when the boats could not land, which was often the case, we piped to dinner pro forma, as our captain liked regularity, and drank cold water to fill our stomachs.

I have often heard my poor old uncle say that no man knows what he can do till he tries; and the enemy gave us plenty of opportunities of displaying our ingenuity, industry, watchfulness, and abstinence.  When poor Penelope wove her web, the poet says—­

  “The night unravelled what the day began.”

With us it was precisely the reverse:  the day destroyed all the labours of the night.  The hours of darkness were employed by us in filling sand-bags, and laying them in the breach, clearing away rubbish, and preparing to receive the enemy’s fire, which was sure to recommence at daylight.  These avocations, together with a constant and most vigilant watch against surprise, took up so much of our time that little was left for repose, and our meals required still less.