the forts, determined to exceed the instructions which he had received from the Presidency, rather than expose the English arms to the disgrace they would suffer, if an expedition, in which they were believed by Angria to have taken so great a share, should miscarry. The next day, the 2d of April, he began to cannonade and bombard the fort of Severndroog, situated on the island; but finding that the walls on the western side which he attacked, were mostly cut out of the solid rock, he changed his station to the north-east between the island and the main; where, whilst one of his broadsides plied the north-east bastions of this fort, the other fired on fort Goa, the largest of those upon the main land. The bastions of Severndroog, however, were so high, that the Protector could only point her upper tier at them; but being anchored within an hundred yards, the musketry in the round, tops drove the enemy from their guns, and by noon the parapet of the north-east bastion was in ruins: when a shell from one of the bomb-vessels set fire to a thatched house, which the garrison, dreading the Protector's musketry, were afraid to extinguish: the blaze spreading fiercely at this dry season of the year, all the buildings of the fort were soon in flames, and amongst them a magazine
