be lost, he sent a corporal's guard to the fort, and
there discovered an Irish sergeant by the name of
Kilsey, who had sworn an oath that if every other man
in the fort ran away like a lot of addle-pated sheep,
he would not run with them; he would stand to his post
to the last, and when the couple of ships outside
had got through bombarding the stout walls of the fort,
the world would see that there was at least one British
soldier who was not afraid of a bomb, be it little or big.
Therefore he had managed to elude observation, and to remain
behind.

The sergeant was so hot-headed in his determination
to stand by the fort, that it required violence to
remove him; and it was not until twenty minutes
past four that the Syndicate observers perceived that
he had been taken to the hill behind which the garrison
was encamped.

As it had been decided that Repeller No. 2 should
discharge the next instantaneous motor-bomb, there was
an anxious desire on the part of the operators on that
vessel that in this, their first experience, they might
do their duty as well as their comrades on board the
other repeller had done theirs. The most accurate
observations, the most careful calculations, were made
and re-made, the point to be aimed at being about the
centre of the fort.

The motor-bomb had been in the cannon for nearly an