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Goulden described the siege, the attack at Pernette, the sorties at Bigelberg, at the barracks above, and the bombardment. It was then that I learned for the first time that he had been captain of a gun, and that it was he who had first thought of breaking up the melting-pots in the foundry to make shot. These stories occupied us till after ten o'clock.
We made several sorties, and did all we could to hinder them, but on the 25th they stormed the fort. It was defended desperately, but in an hour it was all over. Still, that was only an outlying work.
Many sorties were made by the garrison, and fierce fighting took place, but only a score or two of men from each company were taken upon these occasions, and the boys were compelled to remain inactive spectators of the fight.
Eighteen months of long-drawn-out misery and daily increasing famine preceded the fall of the doomed city. The siege was a blockade. No assaults by the enemy, nor sorties by the inhabitants, are narrated, but the former grimly and watchfully drew their net closer, and the latter sat still in their despair. The passionless tone of the narrative here is very remarkable.
On the 12th the enemy made frequent sorties from the Lahore and Ajmir Gates with bodies of cavalry and foot, while a party of horsemen crossed the canal, and made for the right rear of the camp. The latter were seen by the Guides and some Punjabi cavalry, who, led by Probyn and Watson, advanced to meet the enemy.
Yet still those human ants toiled on, patiently restoring what the elements so easily destroyed; and still, despite the sea; the cannonade, and the occasional sorties of the garrison, the danger came nearer and nearer. Bucquoy on the other side was pursuing the same system, but his task was immeasurably more difficult.
During sixty days forty mines and ten counter-mines were exploded; the Turks delivered eighteen assaults, the besieged made twenty-four sorties. Each inch of ground was only obtained by dint of a hard and long struggle, in which an equal stubbornness both in attack and defence was exhibited.
To the credit of the British soldier be it said, that infuriated as they were by the thirst for vengeance, the thought of the murdered women, and the heat of battle, not a single case occurred, so far as is known, of a woman being ill-treated, insulted, or fired upon although the women had been present in the massacres, and had constantly accompanied and cheered on the sorties of the mutineers.
For the sake of humanity, it is to be hoped that we shall have no more of these blind sorties. The French get through the first Prussian lines; they are then arrested by the fire of the batteries from the second line; reinforcements are brought up by the enemy; and the well-known movement to the rear commences.
On one of my first sorties I happened to look over my shoulder and I saw five or six Germans in the most beautiful alignment. And they were all slanting up to dive on me. I was scared out of my life: went down full motor, then cut and fell into a vrille. Came out of that and had another look. There they were in the same position, only farther away. I didn't tumble even then, except farther down.
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