Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/447

Book X. yoke of oxen assembled at the bar, in order to draw off the two guns there; but the firing of the fort soon made them remove the cattle out of reach. The casualties from the preceding night to the evening of this day were one European and one Lascar killed, with ten Europeans and nine Sepoys wounded.

During the night the enemy drew off one of the guns at the bar; their workmen carried on a ruining sap from the left of the palmyra stockade across the glacis, and on a level lower than the covered way, intending to pass under this likewise in order to open the counterscarp of the ditch; they executed this work with so much silence that the garrison had no suspicion of it until two the next afternoon, when the sap was advanced as far as the scarp, or brick facing of the glacis, and being carried too high, the earth of the covered way with the facing fell in, and discovered them; some grenadiers were immediately sent to fire and throw grenades into the hole, which obliged the miners to stop, but they renewed their sap lower. Their mortars continued during these 24 hours against the works. A nine-pounder was disabled on the N. w. ravelin by the fire from the hospital; and the embrasures of Pigot's bastion, and of Lawrence's, the next on the left, were much damaged by shells and stray shot; for both these works were out of the front attack, nor was there a single gun which bore directly upon them; for the enemy had for some days ceased the 4 they opened on the 7th of the month in this direction, which joined to the left shoulder of the Lorrain battery. The casualties from the evening to the evening were two Europeans and three Sepoys killed, and two and one wounded. In the ensuing night the enemy threw many shells into the town, and continued hard at work both in their covered sap, and in raising a battery on the crest of the glacis, but with so much silence, that the garrison could not discover what they were doing: the working party of the fort were employed in restoring the right face of the north ravelin, and the same side of the caponiere leading to it across the ditch. In the interval since the desertion of the black troops at Conjeveram, several, letters and other notices had been received from Captain