On the following morning, I went again on duty in the trenches. We retired into the wood before mentioned, which had a path of communication with the trenches, though it was a considerable distance from the grand breaching-battery. Our operations against the fort continued active and resolute; but our balls made but little impression upon the mud bastions and curtains. Many of them scarcely buried themselves, and others rolled down into the underworks of the enemy, and were kindly sent back to us. It is almost folly to attempt to effect a practicable breach in a fort built of such materials. The crust you knock off the face of a bastion or curtain, forms a great barrier to your approach to a solid footing. Young engineers are too apt to judge, from the appearance of the fallen mud, that the breach is practicable; when, the first step the storming-party takes, they find they sink up to their necks in light earth. A woful instance of this nature I shall have to advert to more particularly in the course of my narrative; and, if it prove a timely hint to the inexperienced, I shall be rewarded. Stone forts are soon demolished; when undermined well at the bottom, the top will soon follow, and they cannot easily be repaired; but mud forts defy human power.
We this day erected howitzer and mortar-batteries; and, when they first opened, they struck terror and consternation into the enemy, who fled in every direction, to avoid those destructive engines; but, in a few hours, they dug holes in the ramparts, which they got into whenever they saw those unwelcome visitors on the wing; and, unless the shell happened actually to fall on them, they escaped in this way. But our shelling in those days was a mere bagatelle to what it is now. A shell in five minutes was then enormous; now, twenty in one minute is by no means extraordinary, and these twice as big as in the times of which I speak.
This day the enemy was pretty passive; no doubt, making places of refuge. Our shells, if thrown further into the town, must have been most destructive, for the population was evidently prodigious, from the number of fighting men. The houses frequently appeared on fire, and several small explosions took place daily; no doubt small magazines. These little incidents generally created cheering by the besiegers, and redoubled firing by the enemy. In the course of the day we saw the rajah for the first time: he was on the shabroodge, or royal bastion, with his suite, reconnoitring with a spy-glass. The officer commanding the howitzer battery laid a shell for the shabroodge, which struck the very top of it, and soon dislodged his highness and suite. In a moment not a soul was to be seen. On this bastion was an enormous gun, about a seventy-two-pounder, which before had been laid up in embryo, but which, as a mark of revenge for our having disturbed his highness, was now got ready. From its gigantic size they could not depress it sufficiently to bear upon our batteries, or it must have torn them to pieces. At last off it went; the report was like that of an earthquake, but the ball went a good quarter of a mile over us. Several other shots were, in the course of the day, fired from it, but the balls never came nearer. Our soldiers, finding it did no harm, christened it Civil Tom; but, from the enormous dust it kicked up, the enemy thought it did wonders for some time; until, at last, finding out their mistake, they turned its gigantic muzzle towards camp, and actually threw a ball close to the flag opposite Lord Lake's tent, more than two miles from the fort. The only real mischief Civil Tom ever did (which, by the by, was rather uncivil) was killing a poor water-carrier's bullock, and carrying away the poor man's right arm. This was more than a mile from camp.
The night passed away without anything of moment, we still keeping up a regular and constant fire, to prevent the enemy from rebuilding what we had had so much trouble in knocking down, and at times indulging them with a few whistling shells to keep them awake.
We now began to grow impatient to see what was inside this boasting fort, for we had pretty well seen what was outside. The breach soon began to wear a stormable appearance, when we discovered that they had thrown out two small guns for the purpose of a cross fire and cutting off our storming party, and to annoy and rake our breaching-battery. For removing this evil we threw out two six-pounders, and we had not fired many shots and given them more than a dozen shrapnells, when a tremendous explosion took place, which finally removed the annoyance.
In the evening I heard the engineer say to Captain Nelley, commanding the breaching-battery, that he imagined we should, on the following evening, put a stop to their vaunting. "The next evening!" I muttered to myself. I was standing close to Captain Nelley, who turned round to me and said, "Shipp, how do you like that information?" I replied, "I wish it was this night, Sir." This I did wish most sincerely, for I felt that, having once resolved to undertake the desperate service in which I had volunteered, the sooner I was in action the better.
"Between the acting of a dreadful thing,
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream;
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection."
I have heard some men say that they would as soon fight as eat their breakfasts; and others, that they "dearly loved fighting." If this were true, what bloodthirsty dogs they must be! But I should be almost illiberal enough to suspect these boasters of not possessing even ordinary courage. I will not, however, go so far as positively to assert this, but will content myself by asking these terrific soldiers to account to me why, some hours previously to storming a fort, or fighting a battle, are men pensive, thoughtful, heavy, restless, weighed down with apparent solicitude and care? Why do men, on these occasions, more fervently beseech the divine protection and guidance, to save them in the approaching conflict? Are not all these feelings the result of reflection, and of man's regard for his dearest care—his life, which no mortal will part with if he can avoid it? There are periods in war which put man's courage to a severe test: if, for instance, as was my case, I knew I was to lead a forlorn hope on the following evening, innumerable ideas will rush in quick succession on the mind; such as, "For aught my poor and narrow comprehension can tell, I may to-morrow be summoned before my Maker?" "How have I spent the life he has been pleased to preserve to this period? Can I meet that just tribunal?" A man, situated as I have supposed, who did not, even amid the cannon's roar and the din of war, experience anxieties approaching to what I have described, may, by possibility, have the courage of a lion, but he cannot possess the feelings of a man. In action man is quite another being: the softer feelings of the roused heart are absorbed in the vortex of danger, and the necessity for self-preservation, and give place to others more adapted to the occasion. In these moments there is an indescribable elation of spirits; the soul rises above its wonted serenity into a kind of frenzied apathy to the scene before you—a heroism bordering on ferocity; the nerves become tight and contracted; the eye full and open, moving quickly in its socket, with almost maniac wildness: the head is in constant motion; the nostril extended wide, and the mouth apparently gasping. If an artist could truly delineate the features of a soldier in the battle's heat, and compare them with the lineaments of the same man in the peaceful calm of domestic life, they would be found to be two different portraits; but a sketch of this kind is not within the power of art, for in action the countenance varies with the battle: as the battle brightens, so does the countenance; and, as it lowers, so the countenance becomes gloomy. I have known some men drink enormous quantities of spirituous liquors when going into action, to drive away little intruding thoughts, and to create false spirits; but these are as short-lived as the ephemera that struggles but a moment on the crystal stream, then dies. If a man have not natural courage, he may rest assured that liquor will deaden and destroy the little he may possess.
Our two companies were relieved for the night, for the purpose of resting ourselves and preparing for the ensuing evening's attack. On this occasion one of our poor fellows was killed by a shot from the fort, and he was ordered to be immediately buried. When we were about to leave the trenches we found him still lying there, when the sergeant was called, and asked by his officer, why he had not been buried, according to orders. The sergeant, an Irishman, answered, "Faith! your honour, he has grown so mighty stiff since he went dead, that he would neither ride nor walk; he threw himself off my back twice; but I am just after ordering a fatigue-party to march him there, whether he will or not."
The same sergeant was chided a short time before for shooting an unarmed man. His officer told him it was a cowardly act to shoot a poor fellow without arms. "Arms! your honour, I beg your honour's pardon, he had two; ay, faith, and fists at the end of them; and he was just after going to be mighty saucy besides. Besides, your honour, did not a spalpeen shoot at and hit me at Deig, without so much as bidding me the time of the morning, or by your lave, or with your lave? Fait! they must expect no palaveration or blarney from Dennis Gaffen." To relate the anecdotes of this man would fill a volume; but, as the two little ones mentioned may bear the reading, I will insert a few more in their proper places.