There was suddenly a sound of
many hammers falling upon steel. The enemy were making an attack upon
the walls both at the front and back, driving iron spikes into them with
the object of making loopholes. The walls were stoutly built, and it was
a full quarter of an hour before the iron bars began to show on their
inner side. In half-an-hour at least twenty loopholes had been pierced
both in the front and back, and a continuous fusillade was kept up upon
the shutters and doors of the house. As soon as one man fired outside,
apparently his place was taken by another with a newly-loaded musket,
and the new-comer only waited until the smoke had partially cleared to
discharge his piece. The woodwork of the house was both thick and hard;
only a small proportion of the bullets penetrated the interior; but the
range was no more than thirty or forty yards, and there were many good
marksmen among the sepoys. Two of the garrison standing behind the
loopholes were struck, and one musket was rendered useless. The
khansaman ran to inform the doctor, who had the injured men carried
upstairs, where he extracted the bullets and bound up their wounds. For
a few minutes more the work of loopholing the wall continued, and the
defences were battered with an uninterrupted hail of bullets. Gradually
the shots found weak spots in the woodwork. Another man was hit, this
time through a fissure torn in the shutter by a previous bullet. Every
now and again a yell from the outside told that a bullet from the
defences had made its way through the loopholes of the wall. These
apertures were a good deal larger than those in the doors and shutters
of the house, and offered a far better mark. The assailants could afford
to lose twenty men to one of the besieged. And when the mutineers
noticed that the firing from the house was less in volume owing to the
casualties, they became more and more eager. The British columns had
retired to their positions near the ramparts; the report had flown
through the city that the fourth column had been annihilated; the rumour
was spreading that the great Nikalsain himself was dead. The fanatical
crowds in the streets still indulged a hope that the British would be
repelled; and meanwhile, to Minghal Khan and his mob, it seemed that the
little party in the house would ere long fall an easy prey.

The sultry afternoon was drawing on towards night. All sounds of combat
elsewhere in the city had ceased. The attack upon the