When day broke the secrecy of their advance was favored by a thick mist, which rose some ten feet high from the plain, and under cover of this, manoeuvring in some fields about a mile eastward from the town, the army split in two, and one half marched straight down to the shore of the bay, and from there, turning along the coast, ranged itself along the harbor shore and on the breakwater, made of large rough blocks of stone, which sheltered the harbor from southerly winds, and the other three, leaving the citadel on their right hand, went straight for the lower town. Half an hour afterwards the heat of the sun began to disperse the morning mists, and as they got to the outskirts of the town the vast vapor was rolled away, and the sentries on the citadel looking out southward saw three companies of soldiers not half a mile off. The alarm was given at once and spread through the lower town like fire. From all the houses rushed out men, women, and children, some still half clad or just awakened from their morning sleep, mothers with babies in their arms, and old men almost as helpless, who ran this way and that in the first panic terror, but gradually settled down into two steady streams--the one up to the citadel to find refuge there, the other to the harbor to seek means of flight. But the army came on in silence, making its way slowly up the narrow streets towards the citadel, without being attacked by the terrified and unarmed inhabitants, and in its turn neither striking a blow nor firing a shot. Two companies only had entered the town, the third remaining on the outskirts to the east, acting like a "stop" in cover-shooting, to drive the inhabitants back again, lest any should convey the alarm to Tripoli. From the west of the town a bridge led over the torrent, and here Petrobey stationed some hundred men to prevent any one leaving the town across the river; but before long, wishing to concentrate all his forces in the town, Yanni was sent to the party picketed there with orders to destroy the bridge. This was made of wood, but preparations were in hand for replacing it with one of iron, and several girders were lying about on the bank for the approaching work. With one of these as a lever, and twenty men to work it, it was an affair of ten minutes only to prize up some half-dozen planks of the wooden structure, and after that to saw in half a couple of the timber poles on which it rested. The bridge thus weakened drooped towards the water, and soon was caught by the swift stream below. Then, as some monstrous fish plucks at a swimmer's limbs, it twitched and fretted against the remaining portion, and soon with a rush and swirl of timbers and planks it tore away a gap of some twenty feet across, sufficient to stop any would-be fugitives.