Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/473

Book X. battery, when a short return was made on each hand from the end, and in a chamber at the end of each return was laid a box, containing 200 pounds of powder, to which the saucissons were fixed. The gallery before the blind was sufficiently advanced towards the sea-side to cross any approach under ground to the blind, and another branch was opened from this gallery ten feet on the outside of the east face of the covered-way, parallel to which it was intended to prolong the branch to the north, in order to discover and meet the enemy if working under ground in this part. In the morning the Cuddalore sloop belonging to the Company returned into the road, which she had left ten days before, having employed this time in regaining the distance she had sailed in one; orders were immediately sent off to her by a catamaran; in consequence of which she bore down into the road of St. Thomé, and attacked the two small vessels lying there, which had not yet landed all the stores they had received from the Bristol. The vessels, after receiving a few shot, weighed and ran close to the surf, within 100 yards of the shore; the Cuddalore followed them as near as she could, when a party of musketry, with two field-pieces, came to the strand, and began to fire on her; by which the crew, who were all Lascars, were so much frightened, that they could hardly be prevailed on to stand the deck: the master, therefore, bore away, and in the evening anchored again before the fort. The fire of the day and night wounded two Europeans and one Sepoy, and disabled a 24 pounder on the demi bastion.

On the 11th the enemy's fire continued from the same cannon and mortars as the day before, but more briskly. The Cuddalore sloop bore down again in the morning upon the two vessels in the road of St. Thomé, and was again beat off by the same fire from the shore. The outward embrasure of the fascine battery in the surf was completed, and palisadoes staked in front of it: a range of trees were laid before the palisadoes, and others along the shoulder of the battery in the surf itself. The casualties in the day and night were two Europeans and one Sepoy killed, and four Europeans and