At the period of the outbreak the total of the sappers in the colony, scattered to fifteen posts and forts on the frontiers, was about 200 of all ranks, and notwithstanding that their services were much required in carrying on the temporary defences in the several localities, they were, in this war, called upon for a more general co-operation than in any previous struggle in the colony. From the unexpected firing of a field-piece from the tower of Fort Beaufort on the 20th January, 1851, it was feared that the enemy by some means had entered the place unobserved. Corporal Benjamin Castledine of the corps, without any delay, reported the circumstance to Colonel Sutton, Cape mounted rifles, and received his orders to assemble the troops under arms at their several posts. The order was promptly obeyed; but scarcely had it been effected when a reinforcement of the Graaf Reinet levy rode up, and the tumult was readily explained. The firing was given as a salute to the reinforcement by some imprudent civilians who had not communicated their intentions to the authorities. The people who had thus so alarmed the fort were arrested, so that the affair might be fully sifted; but while measures were being taken with this object by Captain Pennington and a detachment of the 91st regiment to secure the persons of the offenders, a concourse of people assembled at Colonel Sutton’s quarters, where his lady was alone and unprotected, and there deported themselves with gross outrage, at the same time demanding an entrance. Corporal Castledine arrived at the moment, threw himself between the garden-gate and the excited people, and effectually prevented, by his firmness and military bearing, the ingress they so valorously sought. The party then made off, but all concerned were afterwards arrested to await the result of a full inquiry into their conduct. At this investigation, the explanations given being sufficiently satisfactory to exonerate them from the perpetration of intentional alarm or of complicity with the enemy, the Colonel at once released them from restraint. The “Graham’s Town Journal” of the 8th February, contained some animadversions on the conduct of corporal Castledine in this matter, which led Colonel Sutton, in the impression of that Journal for the 22nd February, to vindicate in every particular the corporal’s conduct, and added “Corporal Castledine is one of those well-educated, respectable, and efficient soldiers which are only at present occasionally met with.... During twenty-four years’ service as a regimental officer I have never met corporal Castledine’s superior in his position—seldom his equal.”