Two other batteries, Nos. 3 and 4, were also raised, one of them mounting six eighteen-pounders; and at eight o’clock on the morning of the 11th of September a terrific roar announced that our biggest breaching-guns had opened fire. A loud cheer, sending the smoke whirling away in eddies, burst from the throats of our artillerymen as they saw how well their fire had taken effect, and beheld huge blocks of stone tottering and tumbling down from the parapets of the walls. Cheer after cheer went up at this most gratifying sight, and in about ten minutes the enemy’s counter-fire from the bastions had been completely silenced. Yet they did not at once give up the artillery duel. For what they could not do from the walls they tried to compass in the open, and ran out several guns, with which they did great damage by enfilading our batteries. They also sent out rockets from their Martello towers, and kept up a storm of musketry from their advanced trench as well as from the walls, causing us severe loss. But who cared for loss when Delhi was there to be won? Night and day, day and night, did our siege-batteries belch forth their thunderbolts against the city walls; and by the 13th of September it was concluded that the long-wished-for time had at last arrived. Yet it behoved the besiegers to proceed with caution, and so four Engineer officers were selected to steal forward to the Cashmere and Water Bastions and find out whether the breaches there were now big enough to allow of the assault.