k in the afternoon that the General
decided that the time had come to make the breach aforementioned. The
reserve companies of Gurkhas and Fusiliers were sent across from Palla
in the face of very heavy jingal and rifle fire, and took cover in the
houses we had occupied. In the meanwhile Fuller was directed to make the
breach. So magnificent was the shooting made by his guns that a dozen
rounds of common shell, planted one below the other, had made a hole
large enough for active men to clamber through. The enemy quickly saw
the purport of the breach. Dozens of men could be distinctly seen
hurrying to the wall above it.

Then the Gurkhas and Fusiliers began their perilous ascent. The nimble
Gurkhas, led by Lieutenant Grant, soon outpaced the Fusiliers, and in
ten brief minutes forty or fifty of them were crouching under the
breach. The Tibetans, finding their fire could not stop us, tore great
stones from the walls and rolled them down the cleft. Dozens of men were
hit and bruised. Presently Grant was through the breach, followed by
fifteen or twenty flushed and shouting men. The breach won, the only
thought of the enemy was flight. They made their way by the back of the
jong into the monastery. By six o'clock every building in the great
fortress was in our possession.

Our casualties in this affair were forty-three--Lieutenant Gurdon and
seven men killed, and twelve officers, including the gallant Grant, and
twenty-three men wounded. These casualties exclude a number of men cut
and bruised with stones.

Next morning the monastery was found deserted. It was reported that the
bulk of the enemy had fled to Dongtse, about ten miles up the Shigatze
road. A column was sent thither, but found the place empty, except for a
very humble and submissive monk.

On the 14th, having waited for over a week in the hope of the peace
delegates putting in an appearance, the force started on its march to
Lhasa.

CHAPTER XI

GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT

ARI, SIKKIM,
_June 24._

I write in an old forest rest-house on the borders of British Bhutan.

The place is quiet and pastoral; climbing roses overhang the roof and
invade the bedrooms; martins have built their nests in the eaves;
cuckoos are calling among the chestnuts down the hill. Outside is a
flower-garden, gay with geraniums and petunias and familiar English
plants that have overrun their straggling borders and scattered
themselves in the narrow plot