Three hundred lanzknechts made a sally on this day from the Scottish gate, and a conflict ensued without material advantage to either side. Towards noon a man made his appearance near the drawbridge attired as a Turk, who prayed earnestly for admission, saying that he had been brought up in Turkey, but had come of Christian parents, and was determined to revert to their faith. This man was questioned both by ordinary interrogation and by torture, and gave much valuable information as to the strength of the enemy. Of their artillery, he said that he had seen ten of the largest guns, called wall-breakers, each three fathoms long, in a boat on the Danube; that the number of the Nassad boats was 400, manned with 5000 soldiers. He gave also the first accurate information of the mines to the right and left of the Kärnthner gate, a point of intense interest to the defenders of that post, respecting which nothing had previously been ascertained. The besieged, having now ascertained that one principal mine was directed against the Karnther tower, and the other against the convent of St. Clara, betook themselves with the utmost zeal to the excavation of counter-mines at these two points, propping, at the same time, the walls with posts and beams, so that upon any springing of the enemy’s mines, the ruins might fall outwards and impede the access to the breach. The General Roggendorf ensured to the informant a subsistence for life in return for his intelligence; we may suppose, also, with some consideration of the manner in which it had been extracted. On the same evening a heavy fire was kept up on both sides, which led to the expectation of an assault, but none ensued. On the 2nd of October, the enemy’s mine under the Kärnthner tower was detected and destroyed. A large body of Turks, however, about the same time, pressed forward nearly to the Scottish gate, and retired, after a lively skirmish, with ten prisoners and thirty heads of the slain. To meet the danger of the enemy’s mines, guards were placed in all the cellars near the walls, trenches dug near the fort of the rampart, and drums with peas strewed on their parchment, or tubs filled with water, placed at the suspected spots, to indicate by their vibration the neighbourhood of the Turkish labourers, and guide thereby the operations of the counterminers. By these precautions, many of the enemy’s galleries were discovered, and either ruined by counter-mines, or penetrated and robbed of their powder. It is here expedient to contradict the tale, current to our own time, that the continual efforts of the Turks had pushed a mine as far as the house on the so-called Freiung, which bears still the name of Heidenschuss, where it is said that a baker’s apprentice discovered it and occasioned its destruction.[6]