Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v2p2.djvu/16

 Carew, who were ordered with the pikemen to the attack, the battery was taken in the rear, and an officer and his guard made prisoners, without a musket being fired, although the enemy were at their guns with matches lighted. From the near approach of daylight, our situation became critical; but we had procured a native guide to carry us to the walls of the castle of Belgica; and leaving a guard over the prisoners, and in charge of the battery, the party made a rapid movement round the skirts of the town, where the sound of the bugle was spreading alarm among the enemy. In twenty minutes the scaling ladders were placed against the walls of the outer pentagon of Belgica; and the first guns were fired by the enemy’s sentries. The gallantry and activity with which the scaling ladders were hauled up after the outwork was carried, and placed for the attack of the inner work, under a sharp fire from the garrison, exceed all praise. The enemy, after firing three guns, and keeping up an ineffectual discharge of musketry for 10 or 15 minutes, fled in all directions, and through the gateway, leaving the Colonel-Commandant and 10 others dead, and 2 officers and 30 men prisoners in our hands. Captain Kenah, Lieutenants Carew, Allen, Pratt, Walker, and Lyons, of the navy; Lieutenant Yates, and Ensign Allen (a volunteer) of the Madras service, were among the foremost in the escalade; and my thanks are due to Captain-Lieutenant Nixon, of the Madras European regiment, for the steady and officer-like conduct with which he directed