after the assault on the Mess-House had commenced a
large body of the enemy, numbering at least six or seven hundred men,
whose retreat had evidently been cut off from the city, crossed from the
Mess-House into the Motee Mahal in our front, and forming up under cover
of some huts between the Shah Munzil and Motee Mahal, they evidently
made up their minds to try and retake the Shah Nujeef. They debouched on
the plain with a number of men in front carrying scaling-ladders, and
Captain Dawson being on the alert ordered all the men to kneel down
behind the loopholes with rifles sighted for five hundred yards, and
wait for the word of command. It was now our turn to know what it felt
like to be behind loopholed walls, and we calmly awaited the enemy,
watching them forming up for a dash on our position. The silence was
profound, when Sergeant Daniel White repeated aloud a passage from the
third canto of Scott's _Bridal of Triermain_:

Bewcastle now must keep the Hold,
Speir-Adam's steeds must bide in stall,
Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold
Must only shoot from battled wall;
And Liddesdale may buckle spur,
And Teviot now may belt the brand,
Taras and Ewes keep nightly stir,
And Eskdale foray Cumberland.
Of wasted fields and plunder'd flocks
The Borderers bootless may complain;
They lack the sword of brave De Vaux,
There comes no aid from Triermain.

Captain Dawson, who had been steadily watching the advance of the enemy
and carefully calculating their distance, just then called "Attention,
five hundred yards, ready--_one, two, fire!_" when over eighty rifles
rang out, and almost as many of the enemy went down like ninepins on the
plain! Their leader was in front, mounted on a finely-accoutred charger,
and he and his horse were evidently both hit; he at once wheeled round
and made for the Goomtee, but horse and man both fell before they got
near the river. After the first volley every man loaded and fired
independently, and the plain was soon strewn with dead and wounded.

The unfortunate assaulters were now between two fires, for the force
that had attacked the Shah Munzil and Motee Mahal commenced to send
grape and canister into their rear, so the routed rebels threw away
their arms and scaling-ladders, and all that were able to do so bolted
pell-mell for the Goomtee. Only about a quarter of the original number,
however, reached the opposite bank, for when they