of their numbers. The treachery of the guides was answerable for much, but the mismanagement 杭州男士品茶 of the officers was responsible for more. Colonel Grant was picked up alive, indeed, but desperately wounded. “The General ought to hang the guides and the King ought to hang the General,” he gasped out in his agony; and a few hours later he was dead. Wentworth, striving hard to put a good face on the disaster, ordered a battery to be erected against Fort St. Lazar on that same evening;
but by
this time yellow fever had seized hold of the army in good earnest, and it was a question not of building batteries but of digging graves. On the 21st the General called a 杭州按摩精油 council of war and announced to the Admiral its decision that the number of men was insufficient for the work, and that the enterprise must be abandoned. “Since the engineers or[72] pretended engineers of the army declare that they do not know how to raise a battery, we 杭州洗浴中心全套经历 agree,” answered Vernon and Ogle, “though if our advice had been taken we believe that the town might have fallen.” Then with studied insolence of tone they proceeded to offer a few obvious suggestions for the withdrawal of the troops. The military officers, not a little hurt, remonstrated in mild terms against the 杭州桑拿水磨会所全套 taunt, and after a short wrangle Wentworth requested a general council of war, by which it was finally determined that the attack on Carthagena must be given up as impracticable.
April 17 28 .
It was indeed high time. Between the morning of Tuesday the 18th 杭州419交友群 and the night of Friday the 21st of April the troops had dwindled from sixty-six hundred to thirty-two hundred effective men. The two old regiments had been much shattered in the attack of St. Lazar, and the residue of the British force consisted chiefly of young soldiers, 杭州足疗店的口一次多少钱 while the twelve hundred Americans who still survived were distrusted by the whole army, and were in fact little better than an encumbrance. On the 28th the troops were re-embarked, poor Wentworth being careful to carry away every scrap of material lest the Spaniards should boast of trophies. The naval 杭州桑拿娱乐 officers grudgingly consented to blow up the defences of Boca Chica, and then for ten terrible days the transports lay idle in the harbour of Carthagena.
April 24 May 5.
The horrors of that time are quite indescribable. By the care of Cathcart hospital-ships had indeed 杭州龙凤信息论坛 been provided for the expedition, but these had neither nurses, surgeons, cooks, nor provisions. “The men,” wrote Smollett, himself a surgeon on board a man-of-war, “were pent up between decks in small vessels where they had not room to sit upright; they wallowed in filth; myriads of maggots were hatched in the putrefaction of their sores, which had no other dressing than that of being washed by themselves in their own allowance of brandy; and nothing was heard but groans and lamentations and the language of despair invoking death[73] to deliver them from their miseries.” 杭州桑拿怎么样 So these poor fellows lay in this sickly, stifling atmosphere, with the raging thirst of fever upon them, while the tropical sun burnt fiercely overhead or the tropical rain p