marvellously both
escaped injury, though the ground all around them was cut up by bullets.
The portable magazine was kept in the partitioned end that served as a
guard-room, and there was no door of communication between the central
portion, where the men lived, and this room. Sergeant Belizario
therefore ran out of the barrack-room, along the side of the building,
into the guard-room, and endeavoured to drag the portable magazine back
with him. He succeeded in moving it outside the guard-room and a little
way along the wall, but further he could not drag it. All this time he
was exposed to a heavy fire, and every musket-barrel from the stone
building on the eastern side of the barrack was pointed at his body.
Finding that all his efforts to move the magazine were fruitless,
Sergeant Belizario unlocked it, and, taking out the ammunition, passed
packet after packet to the men inside, through the opening under the
eaves left for ventilation, between the thatched roof and the top of the
pimento wall, till the magazine was emptied. This done, he returned to
the barrack-room. He seemed to have borne a charmed life, for he was
untouched, while the portable magazine was starred with the white
splashes of leaden bullets.

A hot fire was now opened by the soldiers, and Lieutenant Graham Smith,
taking a rifle, placed himself at the west door of the barracks to try
and pick off some of the most daring of the Indians. Whilst there he was
struck in the left side, and, at the same instant, Private Robert Lynch,
who was standing next him, fell dead, pierced by two shots.

Notwithstanding his wound, which was very severe, the ball penetrating
the left breast a little above the heart, and passing nearly through
him, finally lodging under the left shoulder-blade, Lieutenant Smith
continued directing and encouraging his men; and finding that the whole
interior was swept by the missiles of the enemy, against which the frail
pimento-sticks were no protection, he ordered the men to turn down their
cots, and, lying on their beds, to fire over the iron heads of the cots.
In this position they were tolerably well sheltered, though the Indians
were so close that several of the iron heads were shot through.

In this place it will be proper to refer to a soldier who, all this
time, was outside the barrack. This was Private Bidwell, who, when the
Indians arrived, had just been posted sentry on a commissariat store
close to the officers' quarters