r,
that the very first shot dismounted one of the eighteen-pounders in the
fort. The second again struck the gun and completely disabled it. The
besieged mounted their second heavy gun in its place, and were preparing
to open fire on the French battery, when a shot struck it also and
dismounted it. It was useless to attempt to replace it, and it was,
during the night, removed to a portion of the walls not exposed to the
fire of the enemy's battery. The besiegers continued their fire, and in
six days had demolished the wall facing their battery, making a breach
of fifty feet wide.

Clive, who had now only the two young subalterns serving under him,
worked indefatigably. His coolness and confidence of bearing kept up
the courage of his little garrison, and every night, when darkness hid
them from the view of the enemy's sharpshooters, the men laboured to
prepare for the impending attack. Works were thrown up inside the
fort, to command the breach. Two deep trenches were dug, one behind
the other; the one close to the wall, the other some distance farther
back. These trenches were filled with sharp iron three-pointed spikes,
and palisades erected extending from the ends of the ditches to the
ramparts, and a house pulled down in the rear to the height of a
breastwork, behind which the garrison could fire at the assailants, as
they endeavoured to cross the ditches.

One of the three field pieces Clive had brought with him he mounted on
a tower, flanking the breach outside. Two he held in reserve, and
placed two small guns, which he had found in the fort when he took it,
on the flat roof of a house in the fort commanding the inside of the
breach.

From the roofs of some of the houses around the fort the besiegers
beheld the progress of these defences; and Riza Sahib feared, in spite
of his enormously superior numbers, to run the risk of a repulse. He
knew that the amount of provisions which Clive had stored was not
large, and thinking that famine would inevitably compel his surrender,
shrank from incurring the risk of disheartening his army, by the
slaughter which an unsuccessful attempt to carry the place must
entail. He determined, at any rate, to increase the probability of
success, and utilize his superior forces, by making an assault at two
points, simultaneously. He therefore erected a battery on the
southwest, and began to effect a breach on that side, also.

Clive, on his part, had been busy endeavouring to obtai