The real bombardment of Hanyang commenced at night on that date, and the sight was one never to be forgotten by those who had pluck enough to go to the high buildings and watch the guns opening. From a score of batteries on the Wuchang side of the river, from the big forts on the main hills inside Wuchang, from perhaps thirty guns raised on Hanyang Hill and {126} four hills away to the right there came constant tiny flashes. The distant boom for hours in the dense darkness gave one an eerie feeling. The furious whizz of the shells as they swept over the foreign houses intensified one's peculiar fascination. Bullets sailing through the air bred in one a spirit of cool bravado. Around the countryside for miles one could count a score of fires--the whole population seemed to be burned out of house and home. At midnight there came a significant lull. Waiting and watching, watching and waiting on the tops of their houses, foreign civilians looked on to the passing tragedy, and were held spellbound in the dark. Those tiny flashes of blue seemed to be the sparks of a new life, but the morning brought the news that the Revolutionists had had the worst of it. When the Northern Army first arrived at Niekow it was part of their programme to dispatch a force through the lakes to the Han River at Hankow, from which place they could reach Hanyang in half a day. The boats were collected for the expedition, but for some reason or other it was called off. The project appears to have been taken up again, and this time carried through, with the result that the Imperialists, by November 20th, were in possession of Tsaitien, a busy market town on the Hanyang side of the Han twenty miles up. A foreign traveller, who was there at the time of the occupation, wrote up the following particulars about the situation then:--