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CHAPTER XVI. 



THE STORMING OF DELHI. SEPTEMBER 1857. 



JSiGHT after night from September 7 a fresh battery 

 was traced, erected, and armed with its due propor- 

 tion of heavy guns, howitzers, and mortars. Each 

 succeeding day a new battery began to pound the 

 walls or hurl its shells among the outworks of the 

 imperial city. On the morning of the 12th some 

 fifty of our heavy guns and mortars were in full 

 play upon the crumbling walls and bastions, giving 

 the enemy no rest from their deadly hail until the 

 morning of the 14th, when the storming columns 

 were formed up for the final assault. 



During that week of intense excitement Hodson 

 spent all his leisure moments among the trenches. 

 An artillery ofiicer afterwards told the Rev. G. H. 

 Hodson that even when his brother might have 

 taken rest he would go instead to work in the 

 batteries, and " exposed himself constantly in order 

 to relieve some faintino- g-unner or wounded man." ^ 



o o 



From the trenches he would ride out with his men 

 against parties of rebel horsemen, who fled promptly 

 back to the cover whence they had emerged. On 

 the 13th he rejoiced to learn that at Nicholson's 



^ Hodson of Hodson's Horse. 



