The courage shown by the women was uniform and wonderful. Dr. Fayrer relates how a shell broke in the bedroom where his wife was lying. It shattered the room and set fire to the bedclothes with its explosion. Fayrer ran in; and, he says, “My wife immediately spoke to me out of the smoke, and said she was not hurt. She was perfectly composed and tranquil, though a 9-pound bombshell had just burst by the side of her bed.” There were three great all-round attacks, on July 20, August 10, and September 5. The most desperate, perhaps, was that on the Cawnpore battery, the most nearly successful that on the Sikh square. The attack on the Sikh square was preceded by the explosion of a mine which made a breach thirty feet wide in the British defences, and buried seven of its defenders under the ruins. There was good cover for the enemy close up to the breach, and no reason why they should not have swarmed in, except the argument of the smoke-blackened, grim-looking sahibs who suddenly appeared, musket in hand, to guard the great gap. A rush was, indeed, made by the Sepoys, and a native officer of the Irregular Cavalry, who headed the rush gallantly enough, actually crossed the line of the entrenchments—the only mutineer who, during the long siege, succeeded in putting his foot on the soil held by the British. He was instantly shot, and so cruel and swift was the fire poured in upon the Sepoys that they fell back in confusion, and under Inglis’s orders planks and doors were brought quickly up, and arranged, one overlapping the other, till the whole gap was covered, and a pile of sand-bags built behind it. Gubbins describes one critical moment in the siege. On July 21st it was discovered the Sepoys had dug through an adjoining wall and found their way into a narrow lane which skirted the compound; and, literally, only a canvas screen parted them from the British position! Gubbins ran to the single loophole which commanded the lane, and, with his rifle, shot down every Sepoy who attempted to cross it while the gap in the British defences was being hurriedly built up. “At this moment,” he says, “I heard the voice of a European behind me, and, without turning my head, begged that the wall in the rear of the mutineers might be loopholed and musketry opened upon them. The person behind me, it seems, was Major Banks. He approached my post to get a sight of the enemy, and while looking out incautiously received a bullet through the temples. I heard the heavy fall, and turned for a second. He was dead. He never moved, and I resumed my guard over the enemy.” For two stern hours Gubbins guarded the gap. Then assistance came, the Sepoys were driven from their point of vantage, and the gap in the defences built up.