1 SIEGE OF LAHORE. 49
2 either side as the besiegers waited to ascertain the effect of this
3 singular assault. Then the twelve guns pointed at the Hazooree
4 Bag'h gate were quietly loaded, — ball cartridge with a canister of
5 grape driven home over it. The matches were lit and ready to
6 hurl destruction on the feeble portals. Loud and savage voices
7 were heard, fiercely demanding the opening of the gate. But
8 the call was unheeded : — immediately then the twelve guns were
9 fired at once, and the old wooden gate, with thirty-seven out of
10 thirty-nine men placed inside to defend it, fell before the terrible
11 discharge. The two guns loaded with grape were now all that
12 opposed the entrance of the beseigers, and there was left but one
13 out of sixteen artillerymen to fire them. The besieged were
14 panic struck for a moment by the fatal effect of the enemy's
15 fire. At this instant a band of two or three hundred Akalees
16 rushed forward over the ruins of the gate and the bodies of its
17 fallen defenders. One of them had advanced so far that he was
18 able to thrust his sword into the muzzle of one of the guns, by
19 way of taking possession of it, when the sole remaining artillery
20 man, with a little khalassie who attended on him, fired the two
21 guns at once, and nearly a hundred corpses fell out of the mass
22 of men that was rushing forward. The assailants recoiled for
23 a moment before tins close and withering fire, and the defenders
24 of the gate were enabled to load and fire their guns again with
25 as destructive an effect as before. Thus the twelve guns drawn
26 up before the gate were almost unmanned, and the greater
27 number of their horses were killed. This first gleam of suc-
28 cess for the besieged was heightened by the promptitude with
29 which the Dogra men, without awaiting orders from Rajah
30 Goolaub Sing, poured their fire of musketry from the walls upon
31 the confused mass below. The effect was that in about ten
32 minutes the Hazooree Bagh was cleared of the besiegers, who
33 left behind them about three hundred killed, one hundred
34 wounded, and about fifty prisoners taken by a sally of the Dooras
35 sword in hand. During the confusion Shere Sing escaped from
36 H