On the 18th of February things began to wear a more enlivening appearance. The breached bastion seemed to bow its haughty head to our roaring guns, and the 20th was talked of as the day for storming it. Our last disastrous repulse was scarcely eradicated from our minds; the massacre of our brave comrades was still alive in our memories; but the fond hope of retaliation--I do not mean in cutting up a poor defenceless creature, not a single instance of which can, in the long course of our wars, be brought against the Company's army--spirited us up, and we looked forward to the time when we might drag the garments of our murdered comrades from the backs of the vaunting foe. They were now daily and hourly exhibiting to our view the number of muskets they had taken; our ammunition which had fallen into their hands was now turned against ourselves; as also our cannon-shot, which they had picked out of the two old breaches. We again possessed our wonted spirits and cheerfulness, and made preparation to retrieve the British character. The patient conduct and intrepid gallantry of our officers and soldiers when in the hour of their utmost distress, from repeated defeats, did not pass unnoticed by the enemy; and it is not improbable that the resolution and heroism then displayed by the troops were the means of facilitating that long friendship which afterwards subsisted between the rajah of Bhurtpore and the Company. The day appointed (20th of February) arrived, and was ushered in with a new and unexpected scene. About four hundred men from the fort, emboldened, no doubt, by our tardiness, and the repeated defeats which our troops had experienced, rushed out upon us just as we were relieving trenches, and actually reached and had possession of our batteries and trenches before we could return. Every one of these men was in a state of intoxication, and fought desperately; but we soon drove them from the batteries; then, turning our guns against them, dreadful was the carnage. The fort fired indiscriminately at the whole party. These fellows were, no doubt, a set of vagabonds they wished to get rid of; and, if this was the case, their wish was fully realized, for a very few returned to tell the tale. This was the kind of retaliation we sighed for; but we lost a considerable number of men, killed and wounded, in this affray; but these they had not the barbarous gratification of cutting up. Their wounded men left within our reach were sent to the native hospitals, and every comfort administered to them. They were in the same wards with our wounded men, where friendship presided instead of murder. Had the war been between native and native, the cruelties would have been equal on both sides.