By three o’clock the whole camp was astir. Many of the officers and men had taken the Holy Communion the night before, and in some tents the Old Testament lesson for the day had been read--the chapter being that in which the doom of Nineveh was foretold. Some 6,000 men, of whom only about 1,200 were British soldiers, were going to take a walled city defended by 30,000 desperate and disciplined rebels. The news of the foul and treacherous massacre at Cawnpore by the Nana Sahib had by this time reached the soldiers, and inflamed their hearts anew with the desire to take fearful vengeance on such barbarous foes. They had suffered more than tongue could tell; but the hour of their retribution and their great reward was now at hand. [Illustration: “THE STORMERS DASHED OVER THE _DÉBRIS_ OF THE BREACH” (_p._ 133).] Suddenly the roar of the guns ceased, and the columns started to their feet as the Rifles, with a loud cheer, dashed to the front in skirmishing array. In a stern silence the storming columns tramped away towards the ditch; but it was now bright day, for, owing to some hitch, they had not been able to move with the dawn. The consequence was that before they had reached the crest of the glacis, with the Engineers and laddermen in front, numbers of them had fallen under the truly infernal shower of bullets that was rained upon them from the walls. For several minutes the first column found it impossible to lower the ladders and descend into the ditch while the fiendish-looking rebels cursed and yelled at them from the other side, daring them to come on. Presently the ladders were thrown into the ditch, and the men, leaping down after them, planted them against the scarp and swarmed up. Nicholson himself, the “Lion of the Punjab,” as he was well called, was the first to mount the breach, waving with his sword for his men to follow. In a similar manner Lieutenant Fitzgerald led the escalade of the adjoining bastion and fell mortally wounded. With a rousing cheer the stormers dashed over the _débris_ of the breach like an irresistible wave bursting in a breakwater wall. For a few minutes there was a wild chaos of cheers, groans, yells, blazing of musketry, and clash of crossing bayonets, and then the rebels turned and fled like a pack of wolves, leaving this portion of their ramparts in possession of the victorious Nicholson. [Illustration: “OUR DEVOTED MEN WORKED ON WITH A WILL” (_p._ 131).]