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1664] his Council stood at their posts in Surat, and improvised a defence of the factory. They procured two small brass guns from a merchant in the town and four others from their own vessels. With the armed sailors promptly sent up from the English ships at Swally, they mustered in the factory 150 Englishmen and 60 peons, a total of 210 defenders. Four of the guns were mounted on the roof to scour two broad streets and command the large and lofty house of Haji Said Beg, adjacent to theirs. Two other guns were posted behind the front gate, in which port-holes were cut for firing into the passage leading to the factory. What provisions, water and powder could be got were hurriedly laid in. "Some were set to melt lead and make bullets, others with chisels to cut lead into slugs; no hand idle but all employed to strengthen every place. Captains were appointed and every man quartered and order taken for relieving one another upon necessity. To secure the approaches to the factory, the English went outside and took possession of a temple just under their house, and cleared it of its refugees, and also shut up a mosque on another side, whose windows looked into the outer courtyard of the factory. President Oxenden at the head of his 200 soldiers "drawn out in rank and file, with drum and trumpet," publicly marched through the town in the morning of the 6th, "declaring that he intended to withstand Shivaji with this handful of men."

The Dutch, too, defended their house, though