Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/474

450 one Sepoy wounded; a twenty-four pounder was disabled on the royal bastion.

The same fire continued on the 12th, but with more effect, disabling six guns. Before this time all the original parapet, of the N. E. bastion had been battered away; and so much of the body of the bastion itself crumbled, that the outside of the gabions and sand-bags, which had been substituted on the rampart, did not extend beyond the ground which had been the line of the inside of the original parape; and in the afternoon of this day a shot from a twenty-four-pounder on Lally's battery came quite through the gabions, and wounded a sentinel in the bastion; four other Europeans and one Sepoy were wounded, and two Europeans were killed, during these 24 hours.

At three in the morning of the 13th, a party from the enemy's trenches, consisting of 50 Coffrees, advanced along the sea-side from the stockade, of which they were in possession, intending to storm and nail up the guns in the fascine battery. They were led by a Serjeant chosen for his bravery, with the promise of a commission if the attempt succeeded. The party was discovered when within 30 yards of the work, on which they halted, probably to form for the push, and in this short interval received two rounds of grape-shot from the embrasure next the breach, the execution of which threw them into such confusion, that they all ran back to the trenches, leaving seven dead, and the Serjeant desperately wounded. Upon this alarm, the drums beat to arms, and all the garrison and inhabitants repaired to their several posts: and a smart fire was kept up from the defences, and returned by the enemy from the trenches, for some time after the party was repulsed. The Serjeant crawled into the covered -way, where he was taken up, told what he knew of the enemy's intentions, and died before day-break. This day the enemy ceased firing from the three guns in the Lorrain battery, by which the number of their cannon was reduced to seven pieces; but the five in Lally's fired very briskly: their three mortars continued as before through the day, but very sparingly during the night, which gave suspicion that they were busy at work in their trenches, and before day-light