Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/434

410 the certainty of not being understood, although overheard; and having first poured water into the firelocks, overpowered and bound the soldiers, and then landed the boats at the sea gate. This uncommon instance of fidelity and spirit in men, who are deemed a mean and outcast race, was rewarded and encouraged by paying them immediately the full value of the gunpowder and stores.

The enemy's mortars renewed at midnight, and at day-break their cannon, with two pieces more, mounted in the battery at the burying ground. In the afternoon they set fire to a warehouse near the s. E. bastion, full of saltpetre and brimstone, which could not be extinguished for several hours; during which the enemy plied the spot, where the black column of smoke arose, with shells and plunging shot, which did no damage. Lieutenant Brooke, a deligent officer in the artillery, was killed by a cannon ball in the demi-bastion. The enemy's ship Diligent, reladen with artillery and all kind of stores, anchored in the morning off the black town, having been 30 days in working along the coast from Alamparva, although the straight distance is not 60 miles.

The same fire, but more frequent on both sides, continued on the 9th, the enemy's mortars still against the buildings; but their cannon, which in the two preceding days had only silenced two guns, in this disabled or dismounted five, and two mortars. In the night, besides the usual repairs, iive embrasures were cut through the glacis of the saliant angle before the demi-bastion, pointing obliquely against Lally's battery, and guns were mounted in them; but Lally's, nevertheless, dismounted two guns on the demi-bastion the next day; and on the 11th all the five towards the land on the old N. E. bastion were disabled by this and the Lorrain battery. Early this morning the enemy likewise opened two more guns in a ricochet battery intended for four, which they had raised near the English hospital, on the rising ground fronting the centre ravelin on the west side of the fort, against which, however, it was not intended to fire, but to enfilade the royal bastion: it likewise bore upon part of the north-west curtain towards Pigot's. Notwithstanding this battery stood at a much greater distance from the fort, than any of the other three, it was more exposed than either