Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/456

432 enemy's cannon, and none of their mortars had chanced to light amongst them; so that all remained in perfect condition, and the enemy, before they sprung the mine, should have raised a battery in the same direction, on the crest of the glacis, to take off these defences. Immediately after the explosion, they began to fire from two embrasures of their breaching battery in the salient angle, which the fire of the fort, as before, soon obliged them to close; their other batteries likewise slackened, and their mortars still more. Their workmen were chiefly employed during the night, in lowering the embrasures of their breaching battery; the garrison, besides the repairs of the demi bastion, against which the greatest part of the enemy's fire had been directed, worked at their two mining galleries. The casualties of the day and night, besides the men wounded by the enemy's mine, were only one Sepoy killed, and one wounded. At day-light on the 4th, the enemy again opened their breaching battery on the crest of the glacis, and for the first time fired from all the six embrasures, which, although something lowered, still remained too high to strike below the parapet of the bastions; and the endeavour necessary to reduce them even to this level retarded the repetitions of their fire. The two embrasures in the left of the battery bore on the north-east, the other four on the demi bastion. The N. E. returned with three guns, but the demi bastion with none; for the embrasures were closed, in order to let the workmen thicken the parapet within; and their fire was much better supplied by the four innermost guns in the flank of the royal bastion, upon which not a gun in the breaching battery against which they fired, nor from any other, could bear; and the gunners, sensible of their security, fired with deliberate aim, whilst the three guns on the N. E. bastion continued hotly on their opposites, and both together obliged the enemy in less than an hour to withdraw their guns, and close the embrasures: nor did they attempt to open them again during the rest of the day. At seven the gallery carrying on towards this battery having been pushed to the banquet of the covered-way fell in at the