On the whole, there is something vastly fascinating in military display and glory; and I confess, when I call to mind the bray of trumpets, glint of steel harness, and gallant show of surcoats, paraded that July morning along the St. Catherine beach, I am tempted to drag my obliging reader into the thick of the fight, and recapitulate, with cannibal appetite, the shouts, groans, and extorted cries of agony, by which you could have told with shut eyes how the work advanced, and where this or that poor devil was left sprawling on the driftweed, with a saucer full of blood in a sea-shell, perhaps, just under his left side; to say nothing of those who enacted the parts, as near as their heavy armor and different locomotive organization allowed, of fowls recently beheaded—a sight full of interest to even those darlings of mamma who are brought up to feed sparrows with crumbs, but slay mice and centipedes without restriction. All I intend relating of this skirmish is, that Capt. Bourgignon was killed, as were most of his officers, and as to the fifteen men remaining out of the fifty, not one was without a wound. They could not have acquitted themselves better had De Chaste himself been present, which he was not, but on the opposite side of a high promontory lying next La Praya, making what haste he might to come up with the combatants, whose whereabouts he knew by the cannonading.
Three days before this the viceroy had sent word to the commander that the Spanish fleet could plainly be seen from the Peak; and riding along the coast, De Chaste heard the sentinels posted on the mountains ringing bells and firing their arquebuses, in token of the approach of the enemy, who were not long in arriving within gun-shot of the shore, and keeping the islanders in constant alarm, as before hinted, by cannon shots and the hovering of a cluster of galleys about every available landing. The French general had his hands full in following these last, encouraging his little garrisons, and endeavoring to find bread for his troops, whose dinners the Count de Torrevedros never troubled himself about. Indeed, that viceregal nobleman had enough to do to consider how best to ingratiate himself with the Marquis of Santa-Cruz, and for the present keep out of harm’s way. It was not only the count, however, who cared little for the landing of the Spaniards and ruin of the French, provided their persons and property remained secure—a tolerably universal wish being that their allies had gone to the bottom before reaching Tercera and dragging them into a siege, when all they wanted was safety and submission.