come visitors on the wing; and, unless the shell happened
actually to fall on them, they escaped in this way. But our shelling in
those days was a mere bagatelle to what it is now. A shell in five
minutes was then enormous; now, twenty in one minute is by no means
extraordinary, and these twice as big as in the times of which I speak.

This day the enemy was pretty passive; no doubt, making places of
refuge. Our shells, if thrown further into the town, must have been most
destructive, for the population was evidently prodigious, from the
number of fighting men. The houses frequently appeared on fire, and
several small explosions took place daily; no doubt small magazines.
These little incidents generally created cheering by the besiegers, and
redoubled firing by the enemy. In the course of the day we saw the rajah
for the first time: he was on the shabroodge, or royal bastion, with his
suite, reconnoitring with a spy-glass. The officer commanding the
howitzer battery laid a shell for the shabroodge, which struck the very
top of it, and soon dislodged his highness and suite. In a moment not a
soul was to be seen. On this bastion was an enormous gun, about a
seventy-two-pounder, which before had been laid up in embryo, but which,
as a mark of revenge for our having disturbed his highness, was now got
ready. From its gigantic size they could not depress it sufficiently to
bear upon our batteries, or it must have torn them to pieces. At last
off it went; the report was like that of an earthquake, but the ball
went a good quarter of a mile over us. Several other shots were, in the
course of the day, fired from it, but the balls never came nearer. Our
soldiers, finding it did no harm, christened it _Civil Tom_; but, from
the enormous dust it kicked up, the enemy thought it did wonders for
some time; until, at last, finding out their mistake, they turned its
gigantic muzzle towards camp, and actually threw a ball close to the
flag opposite Lord Lake's tent, more than two miles from the fort. The
only real mischief Civil Tom ever did (which, by the by, was rather
uncivil) was killing a poor water-carrier's bullock, and carrying away
the poor man's right arm. This was more than a mile from camp.

The night passed away without anything of moment, we still keeping up a
regular and constant fire, to prevent the enemy from rebuilding what we
had had so much trouble in knocking down, and at times indulging them
with a few whistling s