e, and when the fort could be maintained no longer to take to the
ships which lay in the river, and drop down the stream out of reach of
the enemy.

My own post was, as I have said, at the rope-walk. At one end of this
place, on the main road into the town, was a battery under the command
of a captain, so disposed as to check any advance. But in case the
enemy should try to creep round through some side streets and take the
battery in flank, our little party of twelve was stationed at the
other end of the rope-walk, ready to detect and resist any such
attempt.

The first notice we had of the arrival of the Moors' army was by a
cannon fired on the north side of the town, at a place where the
Morattoe ditch joined the river Hooghley. This being the direct way
for an army coming from Moorshedabad to enter Calcutta, the Moors here
made their first attack, and all that day the sound of cannon and
musketry came to us on the breeze, without our seeing the enemy or
knowing how the fortune of the day was turning. But with evening came
the good news that the enemy had been repulsed and had drawn off to
the other side of the ditch.

That night we did not dare to retire to rest indoors, but slept at our
post, under a shed put up over some wheels on which the twine was
wound. At four in the morning we were up and eating some bread and
cold meat sent to us from the fort for our breakfast, when suddenly we
heard a fearful rattle and crash of musketry close at hand. The enemy
had been informed of the gap in the Morattoe ditch further south, had
swarmed across it, and were now attacking our outposts all along the
line.

Leaving our meal half-eaten, we sprang to our feet and took our
weapons. I ordered the men not to expose themselves more than was
needed, an order which one or two of them obeyed so zealously as to
place themselves where they could neither see nor be seen by the
enemy, and where all they did was to load their muskets and discharge
them into the air in the direction from which the attack seemed to
come. However, I found some braver than that, and as the Moors seemed
much afraid of our fire we held them at bay well enough. Their own
fire was more frightening than dangerous, the noise being out of all
proportion to the number of persons hit. So much was this the case
that after some hours had gone by without a single ball taking effect
on any member of our party, their first fears wore off and all began
to expose them