regiment had thought he had detected a sign of weakness. On reaching it unperceived, Hope found there a narrow fissure. Up this a single man was with difficulty pushed. He helped up others. More men were sent for. Then those who had entered moved forward. The surprise to the rebels as these men advanced was so thorough that they made no resistance, but evacuated the place. The fight was then over. Adrian Hope's victorious stormers had but to open the main gate to their comrades outside.
The British force halted there for the night. The occupation of the Sháh Najaf had rendered success on the morrow certain. In the capture of that place they had accomplished an action declared by their leader to be 'almost unexampled in war.' The same praise might be given to the wonderful storming of the Sikandarábágh. It is impossible to discriminate narrowly when almost every man was deserving. But it may at least be affirmed that the conduct of Cooper, Ewart, Lumsden, and the privates Dunley, Mackay, and Grant at the Sikandarábágh; of Stewart at the Barracks; of Sergeant Baton, who first pointed out to Adrian Hope the weak point in the wall of the Sháh Najaf; of Adrian Hope himself; of Blunt, who made possible the attack on the Sikandarábágh; of William Peel, of Travers, of Middleton, of Bourchier, of the two Alisons, of Anson, and of many others, for the list is a very long one, gave ample proof that the race which, from the basis of a little island in the Atlantic, had made the greatest empire the world has seen had not degenerated.
The next morning the force, thoroughly refreshed by sleep, advanced to complete its work. To reach the Residency the troops had yet to carry the mess-house and the Motí Mahall, and to do this whilst the guns of rebels posted in the Tárá Kothí and the Kaisarbágh were playing on their left flank. To secure his left, then, Sir Colin de-
