The next day was one of more appalling disaster. It brought to light a new evil that threatened destruction to the beleagured force. The commissariat fort—the magazine in which all the stores, on which our troops depended for subsistence, were garnered up—was outside the cantonment walls. It was situated about 400 yards from the south-west bastion of the cantonment. On the preceding day, the detachment in charge of the fort had been raised to a subaltern’s guard of eighty men. It was now threatened by the enemy. Another fort, still nearer cantonments, known as Mahomed Sheriff’s Fort, was already in possession of a hostile garrison;[123] and the King’s gardens, between which and the cantonments this fort was situated, were swarming with the insurgents. The communications between the British cantonments and the commissariat fort were thus intercepted by the enemy; and the position of the slender guard posted for the defence of the latter was therefore one of imminent peril. The enemy laid siege to the fort; and began to mine beneath the walls. Surrounded as he was by a far superior force, and seeing no possibility of repelling the assaults of the enemy, Lieutenant Warren, who commanded the guard, officially reported the danger of his position; and set forth that, unless re-inforced, he should be obliged to abandon his post. The letter was conveyed to the General, who ordered out two companies of the 44th Regiment, under Captains Swayne and Robinson, to reinforce the party at the commissariat fort, or enable them to _evacuate_ it in safety.[124] They had not proceeded far, when the enemy, posted in Mahomed Sheriff’s Fort opened upon them with deadly execution. The galling fire of the concealed marksmen checked their progress. Captains Swayne and Robinson were shot dead. Other officers were wounded. There seemed to be no chance of success. To move onward would only have been to expose the detachment to certain destruction. The officer upon whom the command of the party had devolved, determined, therefore, to abandon an enterprise from which nothing but further disaster could arise. He brought back his party to cantonments; and so another failure was added to the list.