"Let me go, Sir Charles!" Luffe smiled at his enthusiasm.
"How many men will you require ?" he asked.

"Sixty ?" "A hundred," replied Dewes promptly.
All that night Luffe superintended the digging of the countermine, while Dewes made ready for the sortie.

By daybreak the arrangements were completed.

The gunpowder bags, with their fuses attached, were distributed, the gates were suddenly flung open, and Lynes raced out with a hundred Ghurkhas and Sikhs across the fifty yards of open ground to the sangar behind which the mine shaft had been opened.

The work of the hundred men was quick and complete.