The occupants of this fort actually fired at our advance, when nearly three miles off; I suppose to let us know that they were resolved to fight. We encamped about two miles from the small ridge of hills on which we afterwards erected our breaching-battery. In three days everything was ready, when the usual offer was made to them, as we did not wish wantonly to spill human blood. They spurned the proffered mercy; so to show them that we were in earnest, we commenced by giving them a salvo from our twenty-four pounders, accompanied with three cheers. They manfully returned both; and, from the show of heads upon the wall, we imagined we should have a tough job, and began to think the rajah's boast, that his fort was impregnable, not unfounded, for our shots rebounded some hundred feet; at which the garrison laughed and cheered most heartily. They little imagined what was in preparation for them, and was soon to follow. In about an hour, we effectually disturbed their merriment, and their turbans were seen flying in all directions from our little whistling shrapnells. In five minutes not a soul could be seen; but the screaming of women and children was dreadful. The first day our balls seemed to have made little or no impression upon the wall; but, on the following day, some large stones in the centre of the bastion seemed tired of being battered, and began to shake, and in the course of the morning two of them tumbled out, when an Irish sergeant of the Company's Bengal Foot Artillery exclaimed to a corporal, "Corporal Hogan! come here, joy; sure, we have knocked two of her teeth out at last, and we'll soon bother her wig for her." The corporal replied, "Ah, Paddy, that bastion comes down like sin."--"How is that, Hogan?" asked the sergeant. "By degrees, to be sure," replied the corporal; "for, when that once begins to come, faith! it tumbles on one by the hundreds." Some of the enemy having heard the noise of the stones falling, a few of them peeped their noses out to see what was the matter, and soon retired again, impressed with a conviction that the prophecies of the superstitious builder, as well as his boasted fort, would soon be without a foundation. These fears were rational enough, for the bastion began to give way in all directions. About one o'clock we expected our grand shelling-battery to open, which must certainly have completed the demolition of the fort, for our shells were of enormous calibre. About this time we generally broke off firing, for the purpose of the men getting their dinners; and this was the only time that the inmates of the fort dared to show their noses. Many were now gazing on the falling and dilapidated tower. Its top had giving warning of its being tired of the contest, having found out that iron is harder than stone. I thought I should like to take a nearer peep; so I asked Captain Cruikshank if he would accompany me to take a nearer view of the fort, that we might know what kind of ground we had to go over.