ing down the tall signal-staff as an avalanche would a reed, and with a horrid smash, sacrificing many horses, as well as the limbs of their riders against the squat, round, white lighthouse, Roche’s Tower [ref. Chap. XIII.].[1] But the charge did its work; the British regiment was driven over the cliff along with the foremost of its assailants; then the guns arrived at the spot, and it became an artillery duel between the opposing hills, each side seeking to clear the way for a decisive advance across the valley. But the Allies had the best of it; they were twenty thousand stronger than the British at this point in the field, and Providence was declaring for the big battalions. The French at Roche’s Tower having both a superior force and a superior position, might assume the offensive at any moment, supported by cavalry, which the now trampled hedges would allow to act in the valley; and Lord Redhill could spare no additional force, without drawing away his reserve, which had to watch the Americans at Whitegate, who were preparing to attempt a flank movement.
This concentration of force by the invader at Roche’s Tower sealed the fate of Trabolgan, verifying the prophetic words which our heroine had uttered on the spot a year before, ‘The place is doomed.’ The intervening fringes of fir plantation having been now gapped by the artillery, aim could be taken at the mansion itself, which was still crammed from basement to roof with English soldiers. The roar of the guns was soon answered by the crash of masonry and the rising of smoke and flames from the ill-fated house, where the main staircase was one of the first parts to fall, involving in hopeless destruction most of those who were inside. And now, bit by bit, the solid wedge of the enemy’s advance from Roche’s Tower began to elbow out of the mansion grounds, and to push into the shelter of the wood above it, the English
- ↑ See Frontispiece.
