Thus wearily passed the time, news from Mooltan being most anxiously looked for. At length we had the pleasure to fire a royal salute for its capture and to discuss the circumstances of the successful siege. What those circumstances were, should be here briefly recorded:—On the 26th of December the Bombay troops joined General Whish under the walls of Mooltan. The force now amounted to 17,000 men, with sixty-four pieces of artillery. The time for renewed action had arrived, and Whish was ready to commence operations. Indeed, on the morning of the 26th, before the Bombay division had come up, he had issued an order, expressing his hope that within twenty-four hours after their arrival, “all the enemy’s posts that are a requisite preliminary to the commencement of a regular attack on the citadel,” would be carried; and in the course of the following day they were in our possession. In these operations, four guns of the 4th troop 3rd brigade of horse-artillery, under Captain Anderson, and four guns of the 4th troop 1st brigade, under Captain Mackenzie, were engaged; the former with the centre column, and the latter with the right column. On the following day Whish, reporting these operations to the adjutant-general, wrote, “I hope to-morrow morning to have an 8–inch mortar-battery of six pieces playing on the citadel, at five or six hundred yards’ distance.” On the 30th the general reported that our batteries were in full play, and that already a shell from a mortar, laid by Lieutenant Newall, had exploded the principal magazine in the citadel. Whish had been with the rocket troop at Hatrass, when the great magazine had been blown up there, and now he wrote that the sight of the Mooltan explosion was “awfully grand, and precisely similar to that at the siege of Hatrass, on the 1st of March, 1817.” “I hope,” he added, “that the consequence may be the same; in which case the enemy would abandon the fort to-night; otherwise I contemplate assaulting the city to-morrow.” The batteries at this time in operation, as reported in the general’s letter, were six 8–inch mortars, three 10–inch ditto, four 5½-inch ditto (opened on the 28th), six 18–pounders (opened on the Kooneeh-Boorj), two 8–inch mortars, two 10–inch ditto, and two 24–pounders (with the mortars in the first line, opened on the 29th). Five more 8–inch mortars were then laid down.