At daybreak Mello seized all of the government shipping in the bay and announced a blockade of Rio harbor. He then sent word to Floriano that if he did not abdicate, without naming his successor, by four o’clock that afternoon, the city would be bombarded. This threat was also communicated to the foreign ministers, evidently in the hope that they would try to persuade Floriano to step out, in the interests of peace, but they promptly protested to Mello against bombardment. Under any circumstances, they told him, unless he proposed to violate the international rules of warfare, he could not bombard until after formal notice of forty-eight hours, to allow the removal of neutrals and non-combatants. Floriano’s reply was an emphatic refusal to abdicate, and, precisely at four o’clock, Mello answered it with one shell from a three-inch gun, which exploded near the American consulate and killed a foreigner. During the next week Mello fired forty or fifty shots into the city every day but they did little damage; the fact that they apparently were not aimed at any particular spot probably made no difference in the execution. Frequently he would send boats ashore for supplies, to which nobody paid any attention, and at four o’clock every afternoon the “Aquidaban” would steam solemnly over and engage in a comic opera duel with Fort Santa Cruz, which was located at the point of the harbor entrance opposite Sugar Loaf Hill. Mello’s shots invariably went clear over the fort or buried themselves in its walls, while the gunners at the fort could not have hit him if he had stood still for an hour, so no damage was done to either side. After about twenty shots the “Aquidaban” would return to her anchorage, slowly and with great dignity, and hostilities would be over until the next day at the same hour. This daily duel, which was the star act in the serio-comic programme, always drew a crowd to the water front. Business went on as usual throughout the “revolution,” which was regarded with amused interest rather than with fear.