Sago's house, and a third, on Innes's, Anderson's, and Gubbins's posts, met with a like result. But the attacks had lasted twelve hours. Again the loss of the garrison was small.
Two days later a sortie made by the garrison was repulsed. Six days after that, the 18th, the besiegers made their third grand assault.
The springing of the mine on this occasion, under one of the Sikh squares, was most effective. It made a breach, some twenty feet wide, in the defences. Against this the rebels came with extraordinary enthusiasm. Again, however, the men of the garrison were ready for them, and again did they drive them back with heavy loss.
Still the rebels persevered. They believed it was but a question of time. They knew to some extent of the sufferings of the garrison; how the necessity to be constantly on the alert must tell upon them. They kept up, then, a fire almost unremitting, varied by sudden rushes on points which they regarded as weak or likely to give way to pressure. In one sense the conviction they held as to the wearied condition of the garrison was too true. Their ranks were rapidly thinning. They had to repair the defences daily, to remove supplies from the buildings which had either fallen in or which succumbed to the enemy's shot, to countermine the rebels' mines, to remove guns, to erect barricades, to bury corpses, to serve out the daily rations, and, with the weak and daily diminishing garrison, to supply fatigue parties of eight or ten men each to do work for which, under ordinary circumstances, ten times that number would not have been considered excessive. The garrison, however, performed all these duties with cheerfulness and resolution. In their ranks there was never a sign of faltering.
Their hopes of relief were becoming less bright. On
