Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/726

702 for none of them were on the perpendiculars on which the breaching batteries were intended to be erected. They opened at midnight, between the 8th and 9th, firing all of them at the same time, and in vollies, on the signal of a shell. A little before the first volley, Colonel Coote, with two or three officers, approached towards the glacis of the north front, in order to observe what effect the firing would produce upon the garrison. They beat to arms, but without confusion, and seemed to have every thing in proper order on their bastions; they raised blue lights in different parts of the town, but did not fire a shot. Captain Fletcher, who was with the Colonel, very imprudently quitted him without notice, and went to the foot of the glacis, where he fell in with the centinel of an advanced guard of Sepoys, whom he seized and disarmed, and was bringing off; when the guard, hearing the struggle, ran into the covered-way, from whence immediately came a hot fire of musketry upon Colonel Coote's party; but Fletcher brought off the Sepoy, who gave no intelligence that was not better known before.

The batteries ceased before day-break, and the guns were kept masked until the afternoon, when they recommenced, and the town returned with great vivacity, but the firing ceased on both sides in two hours. The two batteries to the south prevented the enemy from launching a large boat which they had fitted on the shore near the bar, and drove them likewise from their guns in St. Thomas's redoubt, which were only mounted in barbette.

The firing was variously renewed in the six following days, but diminished much on the 18th from want of powder; but the purpose of wasting the garrison with fatigue, which their scanty allowance of provisions rendered them little able to endure. On the 19th, a party of pioneers appeared at work with great eagerness, to raise and convert the barbette of St. Thomas's redoubt into a parapet with embrasures. The battery on the sand island fired to interrupt them by night as well as by day, but they persevered. On the 20th, some powder arrived in a vessel from Madrass,