some thirty or forty feet
high; and, to view one of the bastions from this excavation is really
terrific. On the front and other side there is scarcely any ditch; but
the entrance is through five gateways, each of these commanded by small
guns, and having small loop-holes for matchlocks.

The occupants of this fort actually fired at our advance, when nearly
three miles off; I suppose to let us know that they were resolved to
fight. We encamped about two miles from the small ridge of hills on
which we afterwards erected our breaching-battery. In three days
everything was ready, when the usual offer was made to them, as we did
not wish wantonly to spill human blood. They spurned the proffered
mercy; so to show them that we were in earnest, we commenced by giving
them a salvo from our twenty-four pounders, accompanied with three
cheers. They manfully returned both; and, from the show of heads upon
the wall, we imagined we should have a tough job, and began to think the
rajah's boast, that his fort was impregnable, not unfounded, for our
shots rebounded some hundred feet; at which the garrison laughed and
cheered most heartily. They little imagined what was in preparation for
them, and was soon to follow. In about an hour, we effectually disturbed
their merriment, and their turbans were seen flying in all directions
from our little whistling shrapnells. In five minutes not a soul could
be seen; but the screaming of women and children was dreadful. The first
day our balls seemed to have made little or no impression upon the wall;
but, on the following day, some large stones in the centre of the
bastion seemed tired of being battered, and began to shake, and in the
course of the morning two of them tumbled out, when an Irish sergeant of
the Company's Bengal Foot Artillery exclaimed to a corporal, "Corporal
Hogan! come here, joy; sure, we have knocked two of her teeth out at
last, and we'll soon bother her wig for her." The corporal replied, "Ah,
Paddy, that bastion comes down like sin."--"How is that, Hogan?" asked
the sergeant. "By degrees, to be sure," replied the corporal; "for, when
that once begins to come, faith! it tumbles on one by the hundreds."
Some of the enemy having heard the noise of the stones falling, a few of
them peeped their noses out to see what was the matter, and soon retired
again, impressed with a conviction that the prophecies of the
superstitious builder, as well as his boasted fort, would soon be
wi