Now at last the siege really began. Ground was broken for the new batteries on September 7, at a distance of 700 yards from the walls, and each battery, as it was armed, broke into wrathful thunder on the city. Each succeeding battery, too, was pushed up closer to the enemy’s defences. Thus Major Scott’s battery was pushed up to within 180 yards of the wall, and the heavy guns to arm it had to be dragged up under angry blasts of musketry fire. No fewer than thirty-nine men in this single battery were struck down during the first night of its construction! A section of No. 1 Battery took fire under the constant flash of its own guns, and, as the dancing flames rose up from it, the enemy turned on the burning spot every gun that could be brought to bear. The only way to quench the fire was to take sand-bags to the top of the battery, cut them open, and smother the fire with streams of sand. A Ghoorka officer named Lockhart called for volunteers, and leaped upon the top of the battery, exposed, without shelter, to a storm of cannon balls and musket bullets. Half-a-dozen Ghoorkas instantly followed him. Four out of the seven men—including Lockhart himself—were shot down, but the fire was quenched. The fire of the batteries was maintained with amazing energy and daring until September 13. Colonel Brind, for example, records that he never took off his clothes or left his guns from the moment they opened on the 8th to the 14th inst. CHAPTER XI DELHI: THE LEAP ON THE CITY On September 13 four engineer officers—Medley and Lang, Greathed and Home—undertook the perilous task of examining the breaches in the enemy’s defences. Medley and Lang were detailed to examine the Cashmere Bastion, and Lang asked to be allowed to go while it was yet daylight. Leave was granted; and, with an escort of four men of the 60th, he crept to the edge of the cover on the British front, then coolly ran up the glacis and sat down upon the top of the counterscarp, under a heavy fire, studying the ditch and the two breaches beyond, and returned unhurt, to pronounce the breach practicable! It was necessary, however, to ascertain the depth of the ditch, and Lang and Medley were sent again, after nightfall, on this business. Medley himself may tell the story of the daring adventure:—