Outram, meanwhile, had got round what we have called the “toe” of the boot, and, swinging to the left, followed the curve of the river bank till a point was reached which took the first line of the Sepoy defences beyond the river in reverse. Twenty-two heavy guns had been brought, by this time, across the river, and sites were chosen for two powerful batteries. Nicholson, of the Engineers, tells how he rode with Outram to the river bank, to choose the position of the first battery. “Got close,” he writes, “to the end of the enemy’s lines, and found we could see into the rear of these works. Poor creatures! They have not a grain of sense. They have thrown up the most tremendous works, and they are absolutely useless.” A stroke of clever generalship, in a word, had turned the Sepoy lines into mere paper screens. A building, called the Chaker Kothi, or Yellow House, had to be carried, as it commanded the site of one of the batteries. Most of the Sepoys holding the building fled when the British attacking party came on, but nine of them stubbornly clung to their post, and they fired so fast, and with so deadly an aim, that they shot down more than their own number before the position was carried. It was only, indeed, by firing salvos from a troop of horse artillery that this stubborn little garrison was driven out of the building at last. Then, from the summit of the Yellow House, a three-storey building, a flag—one of the colours of the Bengal Fusileers—was set up, a signal to the British left wing that Outram’s batteries were in position. On the morning of the 9th, Outram’s guns opened on the first line of the Sepoy defences, that to which the canal served as a wet ditch, with a fire that swept it from flank to flank. Campbell was pouring the fire of Peel’s guns upon the Martinere, which served as a sort of outwork to the long canal-rampart, and at two o’clock the Highland regiments—the 42nd leading, the 93rd in support—were launched on the enemy’s position. The men of the 93rd were too impatient to be content with “supporting” the 42nd, and the two regiments raced down the slope side by side. Earthworks, trenches, rifle-pits were leaped or clambered over, and almost in a moment the Sepoys were in wild flight across the canal. The Highlanders, with the 4th Punjaub Rifles, followed them eagerly, and broke through the enemy’s first line.