Some floating batteries, cleverly constructed by a French engineer, the Chevalier d'Arcon, threatened the ramparts of the place. On the 13th of September, at nine o'clock in the morning, the Spaniards opened fire; all the artillery of the fort replied: the surrounding mountains echoed the cannonade. The entire army, which covered the coast, anxiously awaited the result of the enterprise. The fortifications were already beginning to give way, and the batteries had been firing for five hours. All at once, the Prince of Nassau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived that the flames were reaching his heavy ship. { 315} The fire spread rapidly, and one after another the floating batteries were dismantled. "At seven o'clock we had lost all hope," said an Italian officer who had taken part in the assault; "we no longer fired, and our signals of distress remained without effect. The red balls of the besieged rained on us. The crews were threatened on all sides. Timidly and in weak detachments, the boats of the two fleets glided into the shadow of the batteries, in the hope of saving some of the unfortunates who were perishing. The flames which blazed over the ships doomed to perish served to direct the fire of the English as surely as if it were full day. Captain Curtis, at the head of a little flotilla of gunboats, barred the passage of the rescuers up to the moment when, suddenly changing his character, he consecrated all his strength and the courage of his brave sailors to contend with the flames and waves for the life of the unfortunate Spaniards who were on the point of perishing. Four hundred men owed their existence to his generous efforts. One month after that day so disastrous for the allies, Lord Howe, favored by chance winds, revictualled, for the third time and almost without a fight, the fortress and the town, under the very eyes of the enemy. Gibraltar remained impregnable. The siege no longer continued except in form."