At five a.m. on the 21st they began the bombardment, which was to prepare the way for the storming party. The English fire soon began to silence the Chinese guns, and about an hour after the bombardment began, a shell from the mortar battery penetrated into one of the magazines of the fort. It blew up with a deafening explosion, and so dense was the cloud of smoke that settled down upon the scene of the disaster, so utterly silent was every Chinese gun in the work, that at first it seemed as if the fort had ceased to exist; but as the smoke cleared the Chinese bravely reopened fire. Down at the mouth of the river, Admiral Hope’s ships were once more engaging the two outer forts; but this was done merely to keep their garrisons well occupied, and to prevent them sending help to the smaller fort. Here, too, fortune helped the British, and one of Hope’s shells blew up a magazine in the South Fort, doing a fearful amount of damage to its defenders. Soon after six o’clock the storming column was ordered to advance against the small North Fort, the English force being mainly composed of the 44th and 67th regiments. In front of the column a party of marines carried a pontoon-bridge for crossing the ditches; but as they approached the walls they were met with such a heavy fire of musketry that the attempt to bring up the pontoons was abandoned. Fifteen of the men carrying them fell under a single volley. The French had adopted a simpler plan. They had bamboo ladders, which were carried for them by Chinese coolies. Heedless of the fire of their own countrymen, the coolies laid the ladders across the ditches, and, standing up to their necks in water, supported them while the Frenchmen scrambled across. “These poor coolies behaved gallantly,” wrote Sir Hope Grant in his journal, “and though some of them were shot down, they never flinched in the least.” The fact is, that a Chinaman does not seem to know what the fear of death is; and while these men were exposing their lives for a few pence, their countrymen on the ramparts were just as recklessly standing up on the very crest of the wall in order to get a better shot at the stormers. The English crossed the ditches, partly by swimming and struggling through the muddy water, partly by the French ladders, partly over a drawbridge which Major Anson of the Staff very gallantly brought into use by crossing the ditch almost alone, and cutting through with his sword the ropes that held it up. The stormers were now crowded together between the inner ditch and the rampart. The Chinese could no longer fire on them with their muskets, but they dropped cannon shot, big stones, explosive grenades, jars of lime, and stifling stink-pots on to their heads. The scaling ladders were replaced against the rampart, but the Chinese caught them and pulled them into the fort, or threw them down, spearing and shooting all who mounted them. [Illustration: “ROGERS GOT IN, HELPED UP BY LIEUTENANT LENON” (_p._ 34).]