The Mexicans were good heavy artillerists, but their shot was lighter than ours. Some of them were killed by their own balls which had been picked out of the sandbags by the Americans and fired back. Their strongest and best served battery was that fronting on the one worked by our sailors. The navy was here pitted against the navy, for the commander on the city side was Lieutenant of Marines D. Sebastian Holzinger, a German and an officer of several year’s service in the Mexican navy. He was as brave as he was capable; and when his flag-staff had been cut away, he and a young assistant leaped into the space outside, seized the flag and in sight of the Americans, nailed it to the staff again. A ball from the naval battery at the same moment striking the parapet, Holzinger and his companion were nearly buried in rubbish. Within the city the Mexican soldiers, who had before found shelter in their bomb-proof places of retreat from the mortar bombs falling vertically into the streets, did not relish and could not hold out against missiles sent directly through the walls into their barracks and places of refuge. The Paixhans shells hit exactly among soldiers, and not into churches among women. It is said that when the Mexican engineers in the city picked up the solid thirty-two pounder shot and one of the unexploded eight-inch shells, they decided at once that the city must fall. In spite of the hammering which the sand battery received, no material injury to its walls was done, and what there was was easily repaired at night. Captains Lee and Williams were willing to show faith in their own work, and remained in the redoubt during the fire. At 2.30 P. M. the ammunition was exhausted, and the heated ordnance was allowed to cool. The last gun fired was a double-shotted one of the _Potomac_. Captain Aulick wishing to send a despatch to Commodore Perry, Midshipman Fauntleroy volunteered to take it, and though the Mexicans were playing with all their artillery, he arrived safely on the beach and Perry received tidings of progress. The embrasures were filled up with sandbags, and the garrison sat under the parapet, awaiting the relief party which approached about 4 o’clock. The Mexicans, who had been driven away from their guns, now finding the Americans silent, opened with redoubled vigor which made the approaching reinforcements watch the air keenly for the black spots which were round shots. The result of the first day’s use of the navy guns was, that fifty feet of the city walls built of coquina or shell-rock, the curtains of the redoubt to right and left, were cut away. A great breach was made, about thirty-six feet wide, sufficient for a storming party to enter; while the thicker masonry of the forts was drilled like a colander. These breaches were partly filled at night by sandbags.