The thunder of the British guns roused up at once the sleeping city; on every azotea the troops stood to arms, by every gun stood a gunner with a lighted match. There had been much rain for several days past, now over all the city there hung a thick haze. Men rushed up to the roofs of their houses, and peered anxiously over the parapets into the murky morning air. Then over the whole city there fell a great silence. Rapidly through the suburbs marched the invading columns, meeting with no foe, scarce seeing any sign of life; then as the haze cleared somewhat away they entered the long, straight streets of the city, long monotonous lines of white houses, with barred windows and parapeted roofs, deserted streets in which was neither life nor motion, streets stretching straight before them with no visible end. Some of the subdivisions encountered cavalry videttes near the suburbs, who trotted away before them, shouting up to the azoteas of the houses as they passed the warning of their approach. When or where the firing commenced no one knows, but presently these deserted streets sprang at once into fiery life; on each hand the azoteas bristled with armed men who fired without aim into the thick of the moving mass of men beneath them, who still marched swiftly on with shouldered muskets, and fired not one shot in return. When one man fell another took his place, and still the word was "forward." Fiercer and fiercer grew the fire from the parapets of those flat-roofed houses, men no longer crouching under them for shelter, but leaning over the better to select their victim. Losing patience at the tedious task of reloading, casting aside their firelocks, some tore down the parapet itself with their hands and hurled the bricks at the heads of the marching men. Women with dishevelled hair ran about madly on those flat roofs, more fierce, more relentless than the men, urging them on in their work of death, seizing bricks, grenades, or any other missile that came to hand, and throwing them in wild fury at the lines of living men, who pressed steadily on with teeth clenched and glaring eyes, but who still sent back not one shot in return. Rank after rank was broken, men fell by dozens and by scores, and still where each man fell another took his place, still with sloped muskets, and shoulder to shoulder, the soldiery pressed on up those pathways of death, where the leaden hail poured upon them like hailstones in a winter storm, and where, as they neared the centre, round shot and grape from the defences of Plaza Mayor tore through them.