ladies gave up their stockings to supply the case for a novel, but not unserviceable, cartridge. As their fire became more faint, that of the enemy augmented in volume, rapidity, and precision—casualties mounted up fearfully, and at length their misfortunes culminated in a wholesale disaster. One of the two barracks had a thatched roof. In this, as more roomy, were collected the sick, and wounded, and women. On the evening of the eighth day of the bombardment the enemy succeeded in lodging a lighted “carcase” on the roof, and the whole building was speedily in a blaze. No effort was spared or risk shunned to rescue the helpless inmates; but, in spite of all, two brave men were burned to death. During that night of horror the artillery and marksmen of the enemy, aided by the light of the burning building, poured their cruel fire on the busy men who were trying to save the provisions and ammunition, and living burdens more precious still, out of the fire, while the guards, crouching silent and watchful, finger on trigger, each at his station behind the outer wall, could see the countless foes, revealed now and again by the glare, prowling and yelling around the outer gloom like so many demons eager for their prey.
The misery fell chiefly on the ladies: they were now obliged to pass their days and nights in a temperature varying from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty-eight degrees, cowering beneath such shelter as the low earth-work could give—and all this to women who had been brought up in the lap of luxury, and who had never till now known a moment of physical privation. There were but two wells within reach; one of these had been used to receive their dead—for they could not bury them—the other was so trained upon day and night by the shell of the enemy that at last it became the certain risk of death to remain long enough to draw up, from a depth of over sixty feet, a bucket of water for the parched women and children. Yet necessity compelled that risk, while it made the sip of water rare and priceless, but left none to wash their persons or their wounds. A short gill of flour and a handful of split peas was now their daily sustenance. The medical stores had been all destroyed in the conflagration—there remained
