Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/436

412 gun a little below the garden-house, and appearing jealous of the honour, was permitted to seize and bring it off with a party of Sepoys only, which they effected without receiving any return to their first fire. The detachment marched back the same way they had come, and arrived in the fort at sun-rise with the two guns, and five European prisoners, one of whom was an officer severely wounded. Previous to this, two other, but slight sallies had been made; the one to the N. W. bridge, which fired into the enemy's trench before the hospital battery: the other, to disturb the workmen in the zig-zags to the northward; this party advanced to the head of the work, killed a centinel, and brought away two or three muskets, without any loss. The enemy's mortars slackened this day, but the fire of their cannon continued with as much vivacity as before, and disabled four guns, which as usual were replaced before the next morning. By this time it was evident that the enemy intended to direct the stress of their attack against the two northern bastions, which dictated the necessity of securing them with additional defences: accordingly a palisade was begun in the ditch on the hither side of the cuvette, to extend quite round the demi bastion; a blind, or rampart of earth, at 30 yards distance, in the ditch before the N. E. bastion; and a fascine battery of six guns, on the strand between the east curtain and the sea, a little in the rear of the shoulder angle of this bastion. Early the next morning, which was the 13th, a shell from the fort set fire to some huts behind Lally's battery, which spreading, caught a magazine, and blew it up, with a number of loaded bombs: no fire passed this day either from or against the N. E. or demi bastions; and no gun was dismounted in any part of the fort; but the enemy doubled the number of their workmen in the zig-zag, who were interrupted as much as possible by what fire bore upon them from the royal bastion, the north ravelin, and the embrasures of the saliant angle before the demi bastion; in the night the enemy fired with a field-piece loaded with grape, from the head of their works, on a small party posted near this angle, under the cover of a boat, and wounded three of them, on which the rest retired into the covered-way.