Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/457

Book X. end there, and the light came in; but the miners stopped the hole so soon, that the enemy did not discover the mischance. The gallery was then filled five or six feet back, and from hence a return made to the right, from which it was again continued straight forward under the glacis. In the night, the enemy had withdrawn the two twenty-four pounders from the bar, in order to replace others which had been disabled in the north front of the attack; they however substituted a six-pounder to check any sally from the fort. The cessation of this fire to the south released the Shaftsbury from the greatest molestation she had endured, by which several of her men had been killed and wounded, her hull shot through in many places, and all her masts and rigging ruined. In the morning before day-light, she had moved from her station under the guns of the s. E. or St. Thomé bastion, and anchored about a mile in the offing, opposite to the sea-gate. The French ships continued at their anchors out of gun-shot; so that all the annoyance which she received through the day was a shot now and then from the single gun at the second crochet. Against the fort, the four guns at the burying-ground continued with vivacity, but the two enfilading in the Lorrain, and the four crochet on the hospital-battery with less frequency: all the enemy's first-rate bombs were expended, and most of the next sizes, so that they only fired a few shells of eight and ten inches from the second crochet. In the evening, a sloop from Pondicherry anchored at St. Thomé with a supply of stores. During the night, the enemy fired a great deal of musketry upon the covered-way, and the garrison, besides the repairs, continued the two mines. The casualties of the night and day were one European and three Sepoys killed, and four with two wounded, and a twenty-four pounder was disabled on the demi bastion.

Early in the morning of the 5th, the Harlem, the Diligent, and three smaller vessels, got under sail from their station before the black town, where they left only one, a small sloop, and standing to the southward were out of sight before the evening. The cause of their sudden departure, was a report from Pondicherry, that several ships of force had been seen off Negapatam. At sunrise