About ten o'clock on the morning of the 6th, flames rising from houses near at hand gave evidence of the approach of the rebels. Irregular spurts of musketry heralded the appearance of confused masses of armed men. A cannon-ball crashed through the mud wall and bounded across the enclosure. A bugle sounded shrilly and the defenders ran to their posts. The wailing of women and the cries of frightened children, helpless creatures only half protected by two barracks situated in the southern corner of the entrenchment, mingled with the din of the answering guns, and in that fatal hour the siege of Cawnpore began. In the tear-stained story of humanity there has never been aught to surpass the thrilling record of Cawnpore. It contains every element of heroism and tragedy. Four hundred English soldiers, seventy of whom were invalids, with a few dozens of civilians and faithful sepoys--standing behind a breast-high fortification that would not stop a bullet--exposed to the fierce rays of an Indian sun--ill-fed, almost waterless, and driven to numb despair by the sufferings of their loved ones--these men, enduring all and daring all, held at bay four thousand well-armed, well-housed, and well-fed troops for twenty-one days. Not for a moment was the strain relaxed. Day and night the rebels poured into the entrenchment a ceaseless hail of iron and lead. Cannon-balls, solid and red-hot, shells with carefully arranged time fuses, and bullets from those self-same cartridges that the superfine feelings of Brahmin soldiers forbade them to touch, were hurled at the hapless garrison from all quarters. In the first week every gunner in the place was killed or wounded. Women and children were shot as though they were in the front line of the defense. No corner was safe from the enemy's fire. Every human being behind that absurdly inadequate wall was exposed to constant and equal danger. Here is an extract from Holmes's history: "A private was walking with his wife when a single bullet killed him, broke both her arms, and wounded an infant she was carrying. An officer was talking with a comrade at the main guard when a musket-ball struck him; and, as he was limping painfully to the barracks to have his wound dressed, Lieutenant Mowbray-Thomson of the 56th, who was supporting him, was struck also, and both fell helplessly to the ground. Presently as Thomson lay wofully sick of his wound, another officer came to condole with him, and he too received a wound from which he died before the end of the siege. Young Godfrey Wheeler, a son of the General, was lying wounded in one of the barracks when a round shot crashed through the walls of the room and carried off his head in the sight of his mother and sisters. Little children, straggling outside the wall, were deliberately shot down."