Hitherto the enemy had treated us, on the whole, humanely, but finding that desperate resistance in the northern suburbs, Von Kronhelm was carrying out the Emperor's parting injunction. He was breaking the pride of our own dear London, even at the sacrifice of thousands of innocent lives. The scenes in the streets within that zone of awful fire baffled description. They were too sudden, too dramatic, too appalling. Death and destruction were everywhere, and the people of London now realised for the first time what the horrors of war really meant. Dusk was falling. Above the pall of smoke from burning buildings the sun was setting with a blood-red light. From the London streets, however, this evening sky was darkened by the clouds of smoke and dust. Yet the cannonade continued, each shell that came hurtling through the air exploding with deadly effect and spreading destruction on all hands. Meanwhile the barricades at the north had not escaped Von Kronhelm's attention. About four o'clock he gave orders by field telegraph for certain batteries to move down and attack them. This was done soon after five o'clock, and when the German guns began to pour their deadly rain of shell into those hastily improvised defences there commenced a slaughter of the gallant defenders that was horrible. At each of the barricades shell after shell was directed, and very quickly breaches were made. Then upon the defenders themselves the fire was directed--a withering, awful fire from quick-firing guns which none could withstand. The streets, with their barricades swept away, were strewn with mutilated corpses. Hundreds upon hundreds had attempted to make a last stand, rallied by the Union Jack they waved above, but a shell exploding in their midst had sent them to instant eternity. Many a gallant deed was done that day by patriotic Londoners in defence of their homes and loved ones--many a deed that should have earned the V.C.--but in nearly all cases the patriot who had stood up and faced the foe had gone to straight and certain death. Till seven o'clock the dull roar of the guns in the north continued, and people across the Thames knew that London was still being destroyed, nay, pulverised. Then with accord came a silence--the first silence since the hot noon. Von Kronhelm's field telegraph at Jack Straw's Castle had ticked the order to cease firing. All the barricades had been broken. London lay burning--at the mercy of the German eagle. And as the darkness fell the German Commander-in-Chief looked again through his glasses, and saw the red flames leaping up in dozens of places, where whole blocks of shops and buildings, public institutions, whole streets in some cases, were being consumed. London--the proud capital of the world, the "home" of the Englishman--was at last ground beneath the iron heel of Germany! And all, alas! due to one cause alone--the careless insular apathy of the Englishman himself! CHAPTER VI. FALL OF LONDON.