Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/422

410 peaceful slumber on the housetop; when next morning, just as they were about to descend the stairs to the room below, something whistled over their heads with a rushing sound unlike anything they had heard before; a sharp report followed from the direction of the court-house. Falkland, always on the alert, hurried up to the roof just as another cannon-ball whizzing past warned the occupants to hasten down. A couple of field-guns were to be seen in front of the court-house, at a point where a good view of the house was afforded by a gap in the trees; and the sepoys could be made out busily engaged in reloading them.

"The nawab's guns," said Falkland, surveying the scene through his glass, "a present from our government; they used to stand in front of the palace. So, this accounts for the rascals' inactivity yesterday; they were getting this ready as a surprise. They may have guns, however, but they have no gunners," he added, as the balls from the second discharge passed harmlessly overhead and buried themselves in the garden behind, while Yorke, who had never been in the way of round-shot before, involuntarily bobbed his head. "I beg your pardon, sir," said he, laughing, as the colonel looked round and stared at him — "it was quite unintentional; I won't do it again."

"I wonder where they have got their shot from," observed the colonel, after a pause; "a good deal depends on that. Do you think you can pick up the one which has just lodged behind that bush? Thanks, my dear boy," said he, when, a few minutes afterwards, Yorke returned from the other side of the garden bearing a shot in his hand, and the latter felt Falkland's smile and look of approbation to be an ample reward for the service. "Yes, it is a hammered shot, as I expected; that will be the saving of us: the practice is sure to be bad with these lopsided things, and they won't have too many to throw away."

The sound of the guns created some consternation at first within the building; but Falkland reassured the members of the garrison assembled in the big room, by producing the specimen shot, and the inmates soon became accustomed to this new annoyance, which brought no harm at first. Even at that short range the enemy could not at first hit the mark. Some shot hit the ground about the building, but most of them flew over and buried themselves in the garden. "It is odd that there should be no stray gunners on leave in the city to show them how to handle a gun," observed some one later in the morning, who had hardly spoken when there was heard a noise overhead as of falling bricks, and the messenger sent upstairs brought back word that a part of the roof parapet had been carried away, close to where the look-out man was standing.

Half an hour afterwards a shot came through the east veranda, making a hole in the sandbag parapet, and, sending up a cloud of dust, lodged in the outer wall of the building.

"That is no hammered shot," said Underwood, who was on duty in the east veranda, handing the shot to Falkland, who had come out to look at the place.

"This is a regular cannon-ball beyond a doubt," replied Falkland, examining the missile; " but they cannot have a large stock, or they would not have begun with the lopsided ones, and it will take a deal of hammering with nine-pounders to bring this building down; it was not constructed by the Public Works Department." But the sentries were withdrawn from this veranda, there being no danger of an attack upon it without warning; and the number of balls which came through during the day justified the precaution. For the most part they merely struck the wall, knocking out plaster and brickwork, without doing much damage; but occasionally they found their way into the adjacent side-rooms through the doorways; one shot of this kind went through a bag of meal in the storeroom, and another traversed what had hitherto been the sick-room, shortly after the patients had been removed to the west side of the house. Fortunately the guns were north-east of the building, so that the line of fire was oblique, and did not command the centre room.

Thus the hours sped by, and up to mid-day the garrison had suffered no harm. Then the fire was stopped for a time, to be resumed in the afternoon; but it was still so desultory and ill-directed that the garrison were becoming indifferent to the annoyance, when, late in the afternoon, a fatal shot came through the portico. It must have glanced against a tree or some other obstacle, and become deflected in its course, for the portico was out of the line of fire; but it came crashing through the thin sandbag wall, smashed the legs of an officer of the 80th, as he lay asleep on a camp-bedstead, killed two sepoys lying on one of the steps, and then glancing off from the stonework, and slicing 