The Sepoys, at intervals, made furious assaults on the mud walls, but these were lined by shots too deadly, and held by hands too strong, to make success possible. Had the British, indeed, been the attacking force, they would have swept over the poor earthen barrier, not four feet high, with a single charge, before the siege was a dozen hours old. But, during the whole three weeks of their attack, though the Sepoys, counting fighting men, outnumbered their foes by, perhaps, thirty to one, they never succeeded in even reaching the irregular line of earth behind which the British stood. Their best chance occurred when, on the eighth night of the bombardment, the thatch on the barrack used as a hospital, took fire. The whole building was quickly in flames, and in their red light the entrenchment, in every part, was as visible as at noonday. The barrack was used as a sleeping-place for the women and children of the 32nd. These fled from the burning building, but not all the sick and wounded could be rescued; some perished in the smoke and flame. That was, indeed, a night of horror. “The roar of the flames,” says Trevelyan, “lost every ten seconds in the peal of the rebel artillery; the whistle of the great shot; the shrieks of the sufferers, who forgot their pain in the helpless anticipation of a sudden and agonising death; the group of crying women and children huddled together in the ditch; the stream of men running to and fro between the houses, laden with sacks of provisions, and kegs of ammunition, and living burdens more precious still; the guards crouching silent and watchful, finger on trigger, each at his station along the external wall; the forms of countless foes, revealed now and again by the fitful glare, prowling around through the outer gloom”—all this made up a strangely terrible scene. It is a proof of the quality of Moore’s daring that, by way of proving to the Sepoys that this calamity had not lowered the spirits of the garrison, he organised on the following night a sally, and, with fifty picked men, dashed out on the rebel lines, swept them for many hundreds of yards, spiked a number of 24-pounder guns, and slew their gunners. But the burning of the barracks was the fatal turning-point of the siege. It destroyed the last shelter of the sick and the women and children. The whole stock of medicines and of surgical appliances was consumed, and the wounded could no longer have their injuries dressed. The eighty odd Sepoys who formed part of the garrison had been lodged in the building now burned. It was deemed imprudent to allow them to mix with the garrison generally, and they were told to provide for themselves, and were allowed to steal out of the entrenchment and escape.