Smith, keenly alive to the difficulty of carrying on a regular siege with resources in guns and material so obviously inadequate, had written to that officer to suggest the advisability of an assault. 'The probabilities of success,' he wrote, 'are far greater than those of failure, and the reasons justifying an assault stronger than those which justified inaction.' Barnard died before the proposal could be considered, and it devolved upon Reed to give the necessary decision. Reed neither rejected nor accepted the plan;[1] but he kept it so long 'in contemplation' that the opportunity passed away.
On the 9th the rebels made another grand attack in force. They despatched the 8th Irregulars, the regiment which had mutinied at Barélí, through the right of the British camp, by the rear, and as their uniform was the same as that of the loyal irregular regiment in the camp, they were allowed to pass unchallenged. The consequences of this mistake were alike deplorable and glorious. They were deplorable in that the cavalry picket at the Mound, half-way between the Ridge and the canal, on discovering their error, turned and fled. Not so the artillery, commanded by James Hills, one of the most gallant and daring soldiers in the world. Hills promptly ordered out his two guns for action. But the rebels were upon him, and he had not time to fire. Then, with the cool courage of a man determined at all cost to stop the foe, he dashed into the midst of the advancing troopers, cutting right and left at them with splendid effect. At last two of them charged him and rolled over his horse. Hills speedily regained his feet, just in time to renew the combat with three troopers — two mounted, the third on
- ↑ Four months afterwards Baird-Smith wrote that he thought then, with the full experience before him of the actual capture, that if an assault had been attempted between the 4th and 14th of July it would have succeeded.
