and, while he
was calling to his friend, by name, to come down, "as there was an
English officer present who would protect him," a violent screaming
broke through a door at my elbow. I pushed it open, and found the
landlady struggling with an English soldier, whom I immediately
transferred to the bottom of the stair head foremost. The French
officer had followed me in at the door, and was so astonished at all
he saw, that he held up his hands, turned up the whites of his eyes,
and resolved himself into a state of the most eloquent silence. When
he did recover the use of his tongue, it was to recommend his landlady
to my notice, as the most amiable woman in existence. She, on her
part, professed the most unbounded gratitude, and entreated that I
would make her house my home forever; but, when I called upon her, a
few days after, she denied having ever seen me before, and stuck to it
most religiously.

As the other officer could not be found, I descended into the street
again with my prisoner; and, finding the current of soldiers setting
towards the centre of the town, I followed the stream, which conducted
me into the great square, on one side of which the late garrison were
drawn up as prisoners, and the rest of it was filled with British and
Portuguese intermixed, without any order or regularity. I had been
there but a very short time, when they all commenced firing, without
any ostensible cause; some fired in at the doors and windows, some at
the roofs of houses, and others at the clouds; and, at last, some
heads began to be blown from their shoulders in the general hurricane,
when the voice of Sir Thomas Picton, with the power of twenty
trumpets, began to proclaim damnation to every body, while Colonel
Barnard, Colonel Cameron, and some other active officers, were
carrying it into effect with a strong hand; for, seizing the broken
barrels of muskets, which were lying about in great abundance, they
belaboured every fellow, most unmercifully, about the head who
attempted either to load or fire, and finally succeeded in reducing
them to order. In the midst of the scuffle, however, three of the
houses in the square were set on fire; and the confusion was such that
nothing could be done to save them; but, by the extraordinary
exertions of Colonel Barnard, during the whole of the night, the
flames were prevented from communicating to the adjoining buildings.

We succeeded in getting a great portion of our battalion toget