Captain Russell related the stirring incidents of the day, and told how Merban Sing and two of his brothers had laid down their lives to defend their trust. For some time after this determined assault the rebels became more cautious, whilst our men sat tight, waiting for reinforcements and for a siege-train with which to batter those heavy walls whereon our little guns made no impression. When off duty, officers and men would stroll from one regiment's lines to another, the chief meeting-place being the Flagstaff Tower on the north end of the Ridge, well out of range. Games at cricket and quoits, as well as polo-matches and races, were arranged. Numerous were the visitors to Hindu Rao's house, as men from all the regiments came to see this important outpost, to note the damage done by shot and shell, and to scrutinize those wonderfully tough little Gurkhas who were the first line of defence, and who were enjoying themselves hugely. But though Major Reid[14] had many visitors, he himself never once left his post during these months of bitter fighting. He was guardian of the Ridge, and cricket, quoits, and races appealed to him in vain. [14] Afterwards General Sir Charles Reid, K.C.B. The 60th Rifles and the Sirmuris had become the best of friends and closest of chums, and in the early days of the fighting, when tobacco was still to be obtained without difficulty, little Gurkhas and heavy Yorkshiremen or sprightly Cockneys might be seen sitting side by side, smoking their pipes contentedly, and offering one another tobacco by signs, being unable to exchange a word. By the end of June the casualties among the Rifles, Guides, and Gurkhas had been terrible, and the top room of the house had been turned into a Gurkha hospital, for the wounded Nepalese refused to leave their post. Their British comrades offered to carry them to the big hospital in the cantonments below, where comparative peace and quietness reigned, and where they might have the best medical aid, but the Gurkhas would have none of it. They preferred to stay by their comrades, to listen to the shot and shell whistling around, to hear the news each day--who had distinguished himself, and whether their beloved Major Reid and his officers were still unharmed. So Reid, with tears of pride in his eyes, yielded to the wish of his children, and there they stayed. The troops had been reinforced, but no siege-train had arrived. At their various posts in the Punjab John Lawrence, Herbert Edwardes, and John Nicholson were recruiting the wild Sikhs and still wilder Pathans into regiments of irregular cavalry and infantry. Edwardes, Nicholson, and Brigadier Cotton, in command at Peshawur, the gate of India, had so impressed the tribes under their sway with the might of England, that these fierce men, though at first ready to join the rebels, had changed their tone, and now volunteered to fight against the sahibs' enemy.