passage from New York to Brest, where the main French fleet from Cherbourg was awaited. Some little delay was experienced before the English Channel Fleet could be decoyed away so as to allow the junction of the Allies at Brest; but by dint of skilful feints appearing to threaten various towns on the English coast, the object was eventually attained. Immediately afterwards news was brought by a small steam yacht which had managed to slip out of Cork Harbour, that circumstances were favourable for a landing at that point.
After a calm dark night, the dawn of Saturday the 11th of October found the Allied armada—the united fleets being under the command of Admiral Brin, and the land forces under General La Roche—lying under the Irish cliffs a little east of Roche’s Point. By the aid of the local guides, a body of five thousand infantry taken from both armies effected a landing at the little hamlet of Goyleen, the spring tide being very high and the water perfectly smooth. Thence, according to preconcerted plan, they marched along the highroad westward, pioneered by a squad of bicycling carbineers, mounted on low safety machines and dressed in plain clothes. Under their noiseless escort, the column passed the cross road in front of Trabolgan lodge gate [ref. Chap. XIII.]. Thence defiling up the narrow lane, formerly described, which ascends the hill westwards, and passing the hollow which, as the reader will remember, intervenes between that hill and Fort Carlisle, they contrived to capture that important fort by a coup-de-main, effecting the escalade at a weak point, where the dyke had been left unrepaired. Thus the entrance to the harbour was at least half secured, and presently, in the grey of the early morning, the garrison of Fort Camden, on the opposite or western end of the narrow strait, had the astonishment of seeing foreign war-ships defiling into the harbour
