The enemy have burnt the bridge, and commenced mining one of the bastions of the captured fort.
A strong reinforcement has been sent there; and Sturt is gone down again, at nine at night, to look to its defences.
Sturt has again to-day narrowly escaped being shot. The enemy seem to know and to lie in wait for him, and he never shows his head above the rampart without a ball whistling close to it. The Affghans are good shots when they fire from their rests; and as the ammunition is the property of each individual, they do not throw it away as we do ours. Their gunners appear to be inferior, as they fired at the captured fort at a distance of 300 yards, yet did not hit it.
6th.—Sturt was out till one o'clock this morning. Between twelve and one he crept round the fort and got into the enemy's mine: they had worked in about eight feet. He blew up the mine, which fell in and destroyed the covered way they had made, and shook down part of the garden wall.
News from the Bala Hissar that the enemy are evidently thinning their numbers; and a Ghilzye chief who has been wounded is gone home.
A cossid, who was sent by the King to Ghuznee, has returned. He says he was stopped half way and put in kyde; that during the time he was a prisoner another cossid arrived, sent to Amenoollah Khan from the Kelat-i-Ghilzye chiefs with a letter. This man told him that he was the bearer of a request for troops and guns, without which they could not prevent the Feringhee King reaching Cabul; and that four regiments of infantry, 100 horse, and five guns were already at Karabagh, two marches from Ghuznee: that this occurred five days since (about the 1st). The cossid took his oath on the Koran, before four moollahs, to the truth of his statement; desired he might be put in prison (in which he was accommodated); and further begged if the force did not arrive they would put him to death! So after all this asseveration he was, of course, implicitly believed.
At daybreak not a vestige remained of the bridge; which, however, the General is still very anxious to rebuild, and has sent to inquire if Sturt can do so. Without materials or workmen, and the enemy on the spot, it is as impossible as useless to attempt it.
The General refused to have a party stationed in the small fort to defend this same bridge, and now it is gone. He seems more bewildered than ever, and says if the force arrives there will only be more mouths to eat up our provisions; and we have only eight days', this inclusive; but we have not a man to send out to forage.
The enemy were out to-day, but not in great force. They have got a Russian seventeen-pounder of brass, which they have brought in from the Kohistan, and have planted it in the road, near and on this side of Mahmood Khan's fort. From this they have been firing at us all day, and the balls fall many of them in the gardens of Messrs. Eyre and Sturt's house. We have picked up three cannon balls close to the door of the verandah.
