These careful dispositions were completed by ten o'clock on the morning of the 10th, and at that hour once more "the red fire and smouldering clouds out brake." For close upon five hours a storm of shells was poured upon the devoted fortress. The defending guns attempted to return the fire, but their efforts were intermittent and ineffective. On the other hand, the great projectiles from the 12-inch guns of the Japanese battleships wrought immense havoc both in the forts and in the town. A shell burst close to the house of a lawyer named Sidorski, and wrecked the building; M. Sidorski himself was killed on the spot. The wife of Colonel Baron Frank, who was in the house at the time, sustained terrible injuries, and her daughter's head was blown off. A young lady named Waleritsch was so seriously wounded by another shell that she died soon after her removal to the hospital. An English advocate, a Mr. Newton, was blown to pieces. The house of General Volkoff was completely destroyed, and two sentries only just escaped death. A train which was entering the town from the North was struck by a 12-inch shell; the engine was shattered into a thousand fragments and the driver was killed. And now to add to the horrors of the situation, fires began to break out in various quarters of the town, and the panic-stricken inhabitants fled to the race course, where, behind the shelter of the hills, they were able to find some respite from the terrible tornado which had burst upon them. [Sidenote: Golden Hill Silenced] While all this devastation was being hurled upon the town, the forts themselves were passing through a hot time. The Japanese, assisted by the skilful manoeuvre before described, had found the range for their high angle fire perfectly, whereas the batteries of the defending force could do little or nothing in return. The official accounts issued from the Russian side, while admitting the severity when the bombardment visited the town, said little about the damage to the fortifications or the losses sustained by the garrison; but the reports received from other and independent sources, while varying a good deal in details, agreed in representing the total result as being of the most serious character. It is said that twenty soldiers were killed and that many more were wounded. The Governor of Port Arthur himself, General Stoessel, who was on the batteries during the hottest of the fire, had a narrow escape. A shell burst near to the spot on which he was standing with his staff, and bespattered the whole party with splinters and sand. The forts on Golden Hill suffered severely, and two guns were put out of action. Nor did the ships in the harbor come off scatheless. Heavy casualties among their crews were reported, and it was stated that the unfortunate _Retvisan_, which had already borne so much, received still further damage. The Port Arthur journal, the _Novi Krai_, gave a terrible picture of the scenes on the cruiser _Bayan_.