The wharves, roofs, and steeples of Charleston were black with expectant crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun. One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the stronghold is girt by an almost continuous circle of flashing artillery. Shells scream through the air and explode above the doomed work, and great cannon-balls bury themselves in the brick walls. Still Sumter speaks not. Anderson is waiting for daylight. About six o'clock he breakfasts his garrison on pork and water, the only provisions left. An hour later the embrasures are opened, the black guns run out, and Sumter hurls back her answer to the voice of rebellion. The bombs making it unsafe to use the barbette cannons of the open rampart, Anderson was confined to his twenty-one casemate pieces, mostly of light calibre. The fire was kept up briskly all the morning. Sumter stood it well, but did little damage to the opposing batteries. At sunset the guns of both sides became silent, but the mortars maintained a slow fire through the night. Early next morning the cannonade opened afresh, and in the course of the forenoon hot shot set fire to Sumter's wooden barracks. The flames soon got beyond control; the powder magazine had to be closed; and the heat and smoke became so stifling that the garrison was forced, in order to avoid suffocation, to lie face downward upon the floor, each man with a wet cloth at his mouth. Powder was at last exhausted. About one o'clock the flag was shot away. It was immediately raised again upon a low jury-mast, but could not be seen for the smoke, and Beauregard sent to ask if Anderson had surrendered. The latter offered to evacuate upon the terms named before the bombardment, to which Beauregard agreed, and all firing ceased. The next day at noon, after a salute of fifty guns to their flag, Major Anderson and his men evacuated the scene of their heroism, and soon after took passage for New York.