Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/472

448 but both their shot and shells were directed against the buildings. The Shaftesbury was not ready to weigh and bear down upon the Bristol, at anchor in the road of St. Thomé, before the night closed, and in this interval the Bristol employed all the boats which could be assembled in unloading her stores, and for more dispatch put a part of them on board of the sloop which was in the road when she arrived, and into the other from the black town, which had passed and anchored near her; nevertheless she had not discharged half her cargo before night, and for fear of the Shaftesbury set sail, and was out of reach before morning. It being supposed that the service at the Mount had drained the enemy's posts to the southward of the fort, two companies of Sepoys were detached-in the afternoon, who proceeded as far as the governor's garden, from whence they brought off some ammunition, and in their return set fire to the gabions of the battery near the bar, meeting no opposition. The enemy's mortars continued sparingly through the night, but as in the day against the houses. Not a man or a gun was hurt in the fort during these 24 hours; but the numbers of the garrison were by this time so much impaired by casualties and sickness, that the grenadier company, which had hitherto been kept in reserve, were obliged to furnish a proportion to the guards of the different posts. The next day, which was the 10th, the enemy fired with four guns and one mortar from Lally's, three guns from the burying-ground, two from the Lorrain battery, and with two mortars at the second crochet: the guns at Lally's fired smartly, but most of the shot from hence, as well as the shells from all the three mortars, were, as the day before, directed against the buildings, which were much rent and shattered. The mortars continued through the night, during which the garrison began another embrasure in the fascine battery on the beach, within the flow of the surf; it was intended to sweep the strand, along which the enemy might approach under cover of the bank of sand which forms the beach and stops the sea that has thrown it up. The gallery or mine at the salient angle was this day completed: it had been pushed 90 feet from the counterscarp of the ditch, which brought it under the enemy's breaching