our guns, only waited to be
unmasked, and long strings of mules streamed hourly into the trenches,
laden with shot, shell, and ammunition.

The advanced works were not, except in some instances, yet armed, and
large masses of material which had accumulated in their vicinity
cumbered the embrasures and rendered their parapets liable to
destruction by fire. Seizing upon the opportunity thus afforded by the
negligence of the Spaniards, General Boyd wrote to the governor
recommending the use of red-hot shot against these works. Though the
distance was great, and the effect of heated shot had not then been
thoroughly ascertained, Eliot acquiesced in the proposition, and Major
Lewis, commanding the artillery, was ordered to execute the attack.

On September 8th the preparations were completed, and at 7 A.M. the
guards having been relieved, a tremendous fire was opened from all the
northern batteries. Throughout the day this fiery cannonade was kept up
with unabated fury. By 10 A.M. the Mahon battery and another work of two
guns were in flames and by five in the evening were entirely consumed,
with all their gun-carriages, platforms, and magazines. The effect of
the red-hot shot exceeded the most sanguine expectations; the damage
done was extensive and for a time irreparable; the greater part of the
communication to the eastern parallel was destroyed, and the batteries
of St. Carlos and St. Martin so much injured that they were no longer
serviceable. At one moment the works were on fire in fifty places, and
the flames, lifted by the wind, spread with terrible rapidity; but by
the prodigious exertions of the enemy's troops, who, notwithstanding the
galling fire from the garrison to which they were exposed, displayed a
reckless intrepidity, the work of destruction was arrested and many of
the batteries saved from ruin. Irritated at this unexpected attack upon
works which had cost him so much labor and anxiety, Crillon was
precipitated into a premature bombardment, which, while it exposed to
view the hitherto masked batteries, and thus gave General Eliot an
opportunity of preparing counter-works upon the Rock, at the same time
did considerable damage to the unfinished lines.

On the morning of September 9th a battery of sixty-four guns opened at
daybreak and a tremendous discharge from one hundred seventy pieces of
cannon announced the commencement of the final bombardment. At the same
time a squadron of seven Spanish and two F