Page:The Second Armada - Hayward - 1871.pdf/13

It was a time of agitating suspense to the bravest while the ships of war were taking up their positions to cover the landing, and the transports were transferring their armed cargoes to the boats. After ascertaining by careful sounding that they could approach no nearer, they opened their fire at about the distance of a mile. The rocks were shelled, and the strand was swept with round-shot, causing little or no loss to the English, who never showed a finger above rifle pit or trench till the landing boats intervened and the iron hail necessarily ceased. Then a signal gun was heard; the battery in the centre of their position was unmasked; shells and plunging shot from the mound fell thick and fast among the boats; a line of fire ran along the beach; the rocks and heights were all in a blaze with musketry. The effect was withering when volley after volley, by practiced marksmen, each taking an individual aim, poured into boats crowded with men whose orders were to land and rush to close quarters without returning a shot. And gallantly did they struggle to carry out the programme. Half of one boat's crew and a third of another, some 150 men at the most, did actually reach dry land and make a rush at the trench held by the Guards, who shot down most of them as they approached, then sprang up and drove the remainder back into the water with the bayonet. Here occurred one of those incidents which show that modern warfare, with all its mechanical contrivances for wholesale and cold-blooded butchery, still affords scope for chivalry and romance. An officer of distinguished mien, the scion of a princely house, was pushed to the water's edge, overpowered and exhausted, although still fighting desperately, when his situation