Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/476

452 Thomé; and on their appearance 15 sailors which had been taken out of the Shaftsbury to serve in the garrison, with 30 more Europeans, were sent on board with orders to Captain Ingliss to bear down, and attack these vessels. The decks of the Shaftsbury being lumbered with goods, she did not get under sail until 11 o'clock at night, and was too soon discovered by the two vessels, which immediately got under way, and before day-break were too far to the southward to be pursued. In these 24 hours two Europeans were killed, and five wounded; out none of the Sepoys were hurt. A twenty-four-pounder, on the demi bastion, was split in the muzzle by one of the enemy's shot. For several days a number of labourers, guarded by a party of soldiers, with an officer, had been discerned from the steeple demolishing the governor's garden-house, and in the afternoon of this day they set fire to the village of Chipauk, which stood at the back of the garden, between the bar of the river and the village of Triplicane.

The next day, which was the 15th, the enemy's fire was very brisk in the morning, from six guns in Lally's, four at the burying-ground, and two in the Lorrain battery; but it decreased in the afternoon, and at five o'clock they only fired from three in Lally's, and two at the burying-ground, and from neither of the two in the Lorrain battery; the fire of their mortars likewise slackened. Several camels and many Coolies were seen passing fron St. Thomé across Egmore plain to the black town, loaded, it was supposed, with ammunition; but a much greater number of Coolies, with all kinds of burthens, passed from thence to the southward, which confirmed the intelligence of a spy, that the enemy were sending away their superfluous stores and the remains of their booty to Pondicherry, and gave credit to the information of the deceased serjeant, that they had determined to raise the siege. They fired very few shells, and continued very quiet in their trenches during the night; but the garrison suspecting that they might be carrying on their gabions by the seaside, kept up a smart fire from the fascine battery upon the head of their sap until two o'clock in the morning, when the moon gave sufficient light to discover that they were doing nothing there; on