Since the beginning of December the stress of famine had set in; already all the horses had been killed for food, their bones boiled to make a thin and acrid broth, and the man who caught a couple of rats was reckoned fortunate. Children, wasted to skeletons, with the hollow eyes of old men, were found dead in the street; their fathers thanked Allah that their suffering was over. A soldier one day fell from sheer exhaustion as he was mounting the steep steps of the fortress, the Palamede, cutting his hand badly, and a comrade, coming up a minute or two later, found him sitting down and greedily licking up the blood which dripped from the wound. At length it was impossible to hold the Palamede any longer; those who had to go down to the lower town to fetch the diminished rations were too weak to remount the long ascent, and on the 11th of December it was abandoned, the gate between it and the lower town was closed, and the whole garrison quartered in the latter. From the ships Miaulis had seen the lines of soldiers filing out on the evening of the 11th, and gave notice of it to Poniropoulos. The latter, seeing that no treasure was possibly to be obtained from there, notified the abandonment of the fort to Hypsilantes, who with infinite difficulty was hauled up over the parapeted wall which defended the steps, and, with a voice tremulous, not with emotion, but breathlessness, took possession of it in the name of the supreme government of the Greek republic. There was still a good deal of powder in the magazines, and this somewhat barren triumph was announced to the rest of the army by volleys of artillery. The top of the fortress was quite enveloped in smoke, and the effect, if not the cause, was exceedingly magnificent.