Then, for a few seconds, amidst a blaze of musketry, the soldiers stood at the edge of the ditch, for only one or two of the ladders had come up, the rest having been dropped by their killed or wounded carriers.

Dark figures crowded on the breach, hurling stones upon our men and daring them to come on.

More ladders were brought up, they were thrown into the ditch, and our men, leaping into it, raised them against the escarp on the other side.

Nicholson, at the head of a part of his column, was the first to ascend the breach in the curtain.

The remainder of his troops diverged a little to the right to escalade the breach in the Kashmir bastion.