The whole of this range of buildings not included within our posts was literally alive with sepoys. They could distinctly be heard scampering along in troops, like rats behind an antique wainscot, chattering, yelling, or screaming under the emotion of the moment. From door, and window, and drain, and loophole they fired away at our stronghold, accompanying each shot with a taunt, conveying, in Oriental fashion, a random but painful statement concerning a remote ancestress of the person addressed. Ever and anon a fanatic, inspired by some vile drug, would issue forth into the open, brandishing his sword, in order to indulge himself in a dance of defiance; on all which occasions Lieutenant Stirling took good care that the performance should not meet with an encore. When the enemy became more than usually troublesome, the picket which was most hardly pressed would invite their neighbours to come over and assist them: and then the combined force of some thirty bayonets sallied forth to sweep the line of barracks, chasing the foe before them; killing the boldest and slowest of foot; knocking on the head such as were drunk or asleep; shooting down those who, in their anxiety to get a good aim, had ensconced themselves too high up to be able to climb down on so short a notice; and driving the rest out, and across the plain: at which point the gunners of the intrenchment took up the work, and plied the flying multitude with grape and canister. During one of the earliest of these sorties eleven mutineers were captured, and brought into the intrenchment. As no sentry could just then be spared from the front, they were placed under the charge of Bridget Widdowson, a stalwart dame, wife of a private of the Thirty-second Regiment. Secured by the very insufficient contrivance of a single rope, passed from wrist to wrist, they sat quietly on the ground like good school-children, while the matron walked up and down in front of the row, drawn sword in hand. After she had been relieved by a warder of the other sex, they all managed to slip off: and from that time forward it was generally understood that prisoners were to be left on the spot where they had been caught, with the jackal and the vulture as their jailers. A captive, as long as he remained in custody, was a consumer of precious food; and at once became the most dangerous of spies, if he succeeded in making his escape to the rebel lines with a report of our destitute condition.