On the advance of Major Wahab, a volley was fired from the pagoda; but the stockaded Burmese, who seemed to have been superhumanly cunning _for Burmese_, waited until certain destruction might be dealt from their position, when they commenced firing with the greatest precision. Major Wahab and his men were obliged to lie flat on the ground to avoid the peppering. Like ill-fortune attended the efforts of all the other divisions, and on a retreat being sounded, the men took to flight. The loss on this occasion was twenty-one killed, and seventy-four wounded. However, this reverse was counterbalanced by the success of Major Evans, at Thantabain, where the first minister of state, the Kyee Woongyee, was posted. After skirmishing with the war-boats on the river, the detachment arrived opposite the village, which, after a brisk fire, soon surrendered on the 8th of October. Next morning the principal stockade was attacked, and carried without any opposition. The Burmese having always carried off their dead, it was impossible to find out how many were killed in the encounter; but the place was riddled with shot, and a bungalow in the centre almost destroyed. The detachment returned home without the loss of a man. Brigadier M’Creagh, too, speedily returned to the charge at Kykloo, and finding the place, he went on, and after doing much damage, he returned to Kykloo and Rangoon. “On their advance,” we are told, “they [the soldiers] had an opportunity of witnessing the barbarous character of the enemy, many of the bodies of the sipahis and pioneers, who fell in the former attack, having been fastened to the trunks of trees, and mutilated by imbecile and savage exasperation.”[301]