E-text prepared by Lionel Sear
by
Sergeant David Wilkes, of the First (Royal) Regiment of Foot—thirdbattalion, B Company—came trudging with a small fatigue party downthe sandy slopes of Mount Olia, on the summit of which they had beentoiling all day, helping the artillerymen to drag an extra 24-pounderinto battery. They had brought it into position just half an hourago, and already it had opened fire along with another 24-pounder andtwo howitzers mounted on the same rocky platform. The men as theydescended heard the projectiles fly over their heads, and paused,distinguishing the scream of the shells from the dull hum of theround-shot, to watch the effect of the marksmanship, which wasexcellent.
Northwards, to their right, stretched the blue line of the Bay, wherea single ship-of-war tacked lazily and kept a two-miles' offing.The smoke of the guns, drifting down on the land-breeze from thesummit of Mount Olia, now hid her white sails, now lifted andrevealed them in the late afternoon sunshine. But although blue heldthe upper heavens—cloudless blue of July—the sunshine that reachedthe ship was murky, almost copper-coloured; for it pierced through acloud of denser smoke that rolled continuously along the westernhorizon from the burning houses of San Sebastian.
Sergeant Wilkes and his men, halting on the lower slope of themountain where it fell away in sand-dunes to the estuary of theUrumea, had the whole flank of the fortress in view. Just now, athalf-tide, it rose straight out of the water on the farther bank—a low, narrow-necked isthmus that at its seaward end climbed to acone-shaped rock four hundred feet high, crowned by a small castle.This was the citadel. The town, through which alone it could betaken by force, lay under it, across the neck of the isthmus; andthis again was protected on the landward side by a high rampart orcurtain, strengthened by a tall bastion in its centre and covered bya regular hornwork pushed out from its front. So much for theextremities, seaward and landward. That flank of the place whichit presented to the sandhills across the Urumea was clearly morevulnerable, and yet not easily vulnerable. Deep water and naturalrock protected Mount Orgullo, the citadel hill. The sea-wall, foralmost half its length, formed but a fausse braye for the hornworktowering formidably behind it. Only where it covered the town, inthe space between citadel and hornwork, this wall became a simplerampart; stout indeed and solid and twenty-seven feet high, with twoflanking towers for enfilading fire, besides a demi-bastion at theMount Orgullo end, yet offering the weak spot in the defences.
The British batteries had found and were hammering at it; not theguns upon Mount Olia, which had been hauled thither to dominate thoseof the citadel, but a dozen 24-pounders disposed, with a line ofmortars behind them, on the lower slope above the estuary,