disembarkation impracticable. The troops were carefully kept below; and
to avert the suspicion of the Spaniards, we had trumped up a story of
our having just arrived from Cadiz, and being in want of a pilot: upon
which they told us to send a boat for one. To this we replied, that our
boats had been washed away in the passage round Cape Horn. Not being
quite satisfied, they began to assemble troops at the landing-place,
firing alarm guns, and rapidly bringing up the garrisons of the western
forts to Fort Ingles, but not molesting us.

Unfortunately for the credit of the story about the loss of the boats,
which were at the time carefully concealed under the lee of the vessels,
one drifted astern, so that our object became apparent, and the guns of
Fort Ingles, under which we lay, forthwith opened upon us, the first
shots passing through the sides of the _Intrepido_, and killing two men,
so that it became necessary to land in spite of the swell. We had only
two launches and a gig, into which I entered to direct the operation,
Major Miller, with forty-four marines, pushing off in the first launch,
under the fire of the party at the landing place, by which the coxswain
being wounded, the Major had to take the helm, and whilst doing this,
received a ball through his hat, grazing the crown of his head. Ordering
a few only of his party to fire, the whole leaped ashore at the landing
place, driving the Spaniards, before them at the point of the bayonet.
The second launch now pushed off from the Intrepido, and, in this way,
in less than an hour, three hundred men had made good their footing on
shore.

The most difficult task--the capture of the forts--was to come; the only
way in which the first, Fort Ingles, could be approached being by a
precipitous path, along which the men could only pass in single file;
the fort itself being inaccessible except by a ladder, which the enemy,