While Harley was employed in clearing the mine and holding the summer-house, the enemy, now thoroughly on the alert, began moving in large numbers down to the river-bank and along behind the garden wall towards the water-way, with the intention of making a counter-attack upon it. Captain Townshend having considerable anxiety that an attack made now while a hundred of his men were outside might be successful, lined the parapets and kept an incessant steady fire upon the assailants, while he sent three successive messengers to Lieutenant Harley to hurry up in his work, and warning him that the enemy were gathering round the garden with the intention of either cutting him off, or striking at the water-way. In about an hour's time Lieutenant Harley cleared the mine of the men inside it, and taking down the powder bags placed them in the mine. These were exploded, and the work being completed, Lieutenant Harley rushed back to the fort again, the enemy from the end of the garden keeping up a furious fusillade as they retired. The party lost, altogether, 8 men killed and 13 wounded, _i.e._ 21 killed and wounded out of a total of 100 men. But the work had been accomplished, the mine had been successfully blown up, until it now lay exposed as a trench running up to within ten feet of the fort, and the besiegers had been shown that now, after forty-six days of the siege, the defenders still had pluck and spirits enough left in them to assume a vigorous offensive. It was the most brilliant episode in this gallant defence. [Illustration: SKETCH OF SOUTH (GUN) TOWER, CHITRAL FORT.] Yet the defenders were not to be carried away by their success, or led into slackening their precautions in any way, and they immediately began to run a subterranean gallery round the tower, to ensure that if the enemy again attempted mining, they must run into it. But now relief was close at hand, and the labours and anxieties of the garrison were soon to cease.