with such precipitation as did not permit them to
execute this design. The train was immediately cut off, and the magazine
secured. The nails with which they had spiked up their cannon were
drilled out by the matrosses; and in the meantime the British colours
were hoisted on the parapet. Part of the troops took possession of an
advantageous post on an eminence, and part entered the town, Which still
continued burning with great violence. In the morning at day-break, the
enemy appeared, to the number of two thousand, about four miles from the
town, as if they intended to throw up intrenchments in the neighbourhood
of a house where the governor had fixed his head-quarters, declaring
he would maintain his ground to the last extremity. To this resolution,
indeed, he was encouraged by the nature of the ground, and the
neighbourhood of a pass called the Dos d'Ane, a cleft through a
mountainous ridge, opening a communication with Capesterre, a more level
and beautiful part of the island. The ascent from Basseterre to this
pass was so very steep, and the way so broken and interrupted by rocks
and gullies, that there was no prospect of attacking it with success,
except at the first landing, when the inhabitants were under the
dominion of a panic. They very soon recovered their spirits and
recollection, assembled and fortified themselves among the hills,
armed and arrayed their negroes, and affected to hold the invaders at
defiance. A flag of truce being sent, with offers of terms to their
governor, the chevalier d'Etriel, he rejected them in a letter, with
which his subsequent conduct but ill agreed. [504] _[See note 3 U, at
the end of this Vol.]_ Indeed, from the beginning his deportment had
been such as gave a very unfavourable impression of his character. When
the British squadron advanced to the attack, instead of visiting in
person the citadel and the batteries, in order to encourage and animate
his people by his exhortation and example, he retired out of the reach
of danger to a distant plantation, where he remained a tame spectator of
the destruction in which his principal town and citadel were involved.
Next morning, when he ought to have exerted himself in preventing the
disembarkation of the English troops, who had a difficult shore
and violent surf to surmount, and when he might have defended the
intrenchments and lines which had been made to oppose their landing,
he abandoned all these advantages, and took shelter amo