"what will become of your poor mother! The care of the THESEUS falls to
you: stay, therefore, and take charge of her." Nisbet replied: "Sir, the
ship must take care of herself: I will go with you to-night, if I never
go again."

He met his captains at supper on board the SEAHORSE, Captain Freemantle,
whose wife, whom he had lately married in the Mediterranean, presided at
table. At eleven o'clock the boats, containing between 600 and 700 men,
with 180 on board the FOX cutter, and from 70 to 80 in a boat which had
been taken the day before, proceeded in six divisions toward the town,
conducted by all the captains of the squadron, except Freemantle and
Bowen, who attended with Nelson to regulate and lead the way to the
attack. They were to land on the mole, and thence hasten as fast as
possible into the great square; then form and proceed as should be found
expedient. They were not discovered till about half-past one o'clock,
when, being within half gun-shot of the landing-place, Nelson directed
the boats to cast off from each other, give a huzza, and push for the
shore. But the Spaniards were exceedingly well prepared; the alarm-bells
answered the huzza, and a fire of thirty or forty pieces of cannon,
with musketry from one end of the town to the other, opened upon the
invaders. Nothing, however, could check the intrepidity with which they
advanced. The night was exceedingly dark: most of the boats missed the
mole and went on shore through a raging surf, which stove all to the
left of it. The Admiral, Freemantle, Thompson, Bowen, and four or five
other boats, found the mole: they stormed it instantly, and carried it,
though it was defended, as they imagined, by 400 or 500 men. Its guns,
which were six-and-twenty pounders, were spiked; but such a heavy fire
of musketry and grape was kept up from the citadel and the houses at the
head of the mole, that the assailants could not advance, and nearly all
of them were killed or wounded.