Fayrer, the Residency surgeon, combined with equal energy the somewhat contradictory duties of inflicting wounds and of healing them. He worked with tireless energy, attending to the sick and wounded in the Residency itself. But he records, “I have constant opportunity of using my guns and rifles from the roof of my house, or from the platform in front of it.” And when this indefatigable doctor was not going his round among the sick and dying, he was to be found on his house-roof bringing down Sepoys with the deadly skill he had learned in the jungle against tigers and deer. The best shot on the British side was Lieutenant Sewell, who, happy in the possession of a double-barrelled Enfield rifle, from a loophole on the top of the brigade mess, which commanded a thoroughfare through the Sepoy position, bagged his men as a good sportsman might bag pheasants in a crowded cover. But the Sepoys, too, had their marksmen, whose accuracy was deadly, and whose exploits won from the British garrison the nicknames of “Jim the Rifleman” and “Bob the Nailer.” “Bob the Nailer,” from his perch high up in what was called Johannes’ house, wrought deadly mischief. The British at last paid him the compliment of levelling a howitzer at him, and dropping a shell into his eyrie. But shells were vain. It was discovered afterwards that “Bob the Nailer,” when he saw that the gun was about to fire, dropped down into a sheltered room, to emerge, as soon as the shell had exploded, with his fatal rifle once more. Once a dash was made at Johannes’ house, and its garrison slaughtered, but “Bob the Nailer” escaped, and there was not time to blow up the house. Later in the siege a mine was run under his perch, and Johannes’ house, crowded with Sepoys, with “Bob the Nailer” at its summit, was blown into space. There were moments in the siege when, naturally, the spirits of many in the garrison sank. The children were dying from want of air, of exercise, of wholesome food. They shrank into mere wizen-faced old men—tiny skeletons with tightened, parchment-like skin, instead of round, cherub-like faces. Scurvy tainted the blood of the unfortunate garrison. Sleeplessness and the ever-present atmosphere of danger shook their nerves. Men stole out day after day, at the risk of their lives, to gather the leaves of a cruciferous plant, whose green leaves, unscorched by the flame of powder, could be seen amongst the ruins. A rank and dreadful stench of decaying bodies hung over the shot-tormented Residency, and poisoned the very air. Lady Inglis tells how the ladies held rueful debate among themselves as to the lawfulness of taking their own lives if the Residency fell.