Between the 16th and 17th the enemy succeeded in sending some chosen fighters with machine guns and hand grenades to the houses of Cortelazza, north of the bend of the river. As the distance between the two banks is only a few yards, the sailors opened a heavy fire on the enemy advance guards, intensifying it at night. The battalion did not have sufficient material to undertake a strong counterattack and to repulse the advance guards beyond Cortelazza. On the 18th the necessary material and hand grenades began to arrive. The counterattack was immediately opened with great energy, the houses were retaken, and so the marines were able to throw a bridgehead beyond the Cavetta Canal and Cortelazza, which, consolidated, represents the extreme point of the land resistance toward the sea. This first naval company, which did so much to arrest the progress of the Austro-Hungarians toward the Lagoon of St. Mark, now gives a veteran's greeting to every new group of marines that comes to add its strength to the ring around Venice. [Illustration: DWELLING HOUSES IN VENICE RUINED BY AIR-RAID BOMBS] Venice Under the Grim Shadow The City's Wartime Aspects [A Rotogravure Etching of Venice Appears in This Issue Opposite Page 269] When the Austro-German armies swept down through the Venetian plain last October and November, leaving ruin in their wake, they were stopped at the Piave River, whose waters flow into the lagoon a few miles east of Venice. Though the Italian Army and Navy made a ring of steel around the City of the Doges, and have held the enemy at bay from that time to the present, the sounds of battle have been constantly in the ears of the inhabitants, and frequent air raids have left jagged scars on many buildings and even in the pavement of the Piazza San Marco. [Illustration: ST. MARK'S CATHEDRAL IN WAR GARB: THE BRONZE HORSES HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM OVER THE MAIN ENTRANCE, AND PARTS OF THE FACADE ARE PROTECTED] Throughout the Winter of 1917-18 Venice remained a city without tourists, its population dwindling from 150,000 to about 40,000, its canals silent and almost empty of life, yet full of a new and wistful beauty. The first days of peril had brought the enemy within twelve or thirteen miles of Venice. From the Fondamento Nuovo, at the northern end of the city, the people could see the flash of guns and the bursting of shells. The roar of guns disturbed their work by day and their sleep by night. EVACUATING THE CITY