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The battery 'blazed with cannon, swivels, and small-arms, which fired point-blank at the men ashore and with true aim at the boats crowded together round the narrow landing-place. Undaunted though undisciplined, the men ashore rushed at the walls with their scaling-ladders and began the assault. The attempt was vain. The first men up the rungs were shot, stabbed, or cut down.
Although the scaling-ladders had all been lost in the general upset, those who here got on shore succeeded in climbing over the walls, and forced their way to the place of rendezvous in the great square. There Troubridge, having assembled between three and four hundred men, held his ground, awaiting Nelson and the party that might have entered by way of the mole. It was in vain.
Those in front had the scaling-ladders, and, with their help, we managed to climb up the steep bank on which the castle stood; and in no time, it seemed, we were in possession of all the lower works.
Godfrey of Bouillon and a number of knights sprang after him, and the Christians were within Jerusalem. Meanwhile, at another part of the wall, Tancred and Robert of Normandy had shattered open a gate, and rushed in with their men; while at a third part of the city, Raimond of Toulouse effected an entrance for himself and his followers by the help of scaling-ladders.
Maccabeus, foreseeing that Bethsura itself must become the scene of the closing struggle, had had scaling-ladders in readiness, roughly constructed by his own men from trees hewn down by their battle-axes. With cries and shouts these were now borne onwards towards the bulwarks of Bethsura, and notwithstanding the fierce opposition of the Syrians, two of them were planted against the wall.
Being once within the Citadel they would be for a time wholly out of danger; for even should the enemy try to set scaling-ladders in place, and so break in upon us there, it would be an easy matter for a few determined men to hold the walls until some sort of order had been restored among our broken forces.
Thirteen firemen, including the deputy department chief, a battalion chief, and two captains, limped or were carried from the burning bank, more or less injured. The stone steps of the fire-proof stairs had fallen with them or upon them. Their imperilled comrades, whose escape was cut off, slid down hose and scaling-ladders.
The boldest man in the crew had vainly attempted to get to her, and in the effort had sprained his foot. There were no scaling-ladders then. Meagher ordered the rest to plant the ladder on the stoop and hold it out from the building so that he might reach the very topmost step.
The invading force increased in numbers until, by the 5th of March, there were more than four thousand of them around the fort, most of them fresh, while the garrison was worn out with incessant toil and watching. The end was near at hand. Soon after midnight on the 6th the Mexican army gathered close around the fort, prepared for an assault. The infantry carried scaling-ladders.
He failed to appear; but in January a deserter said that he had prepared scaling-ladders, and was training his men to use them by assaults on mock ramparts of snow. There was more tangible evidence that the enemy was astir. Murray had established two fortified outposts, one at Ste.-Foy, and the other farther on, at Old Lorette. War-parties hovered round both, and kept the occupants in alarm.
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