A dull hum above the trenches told of excitement. Flickering lights and a subdued murmur above the fortress showed that the defenders were prepared. Silently men gathered before the 4th and the Light Division, men provided with ladders and axes, with but few rounds of ammunition, and freed of their knapsacks. Each carried a sack filled with hay, which, it was hoped, would give some cover. And before those two parties waiting in front of the two divisions, and each counting 500 men, there fell in yet again two parties of heroes, the forlorn hopes, the officers and men who were sworn to enter the fortress, to show the way in, or to die in the attempt, noble souls who worked not for gold as a reward, but only for the honour and glory of their country. Ah! a blaze of light from a carcass hurled from the wall showed one of those advance parties. Shouts echoed from the fortress, then there came the splash of flame from guns, the spurting tongues of fire belched from muskets, and the thunder of the explosions. Cheers and hurrahs broke from our men. What matter if the alarm had been sounded half an hour before Wellington was to give the fatal signal? They were ready--the boys of the Light Brigade, the heroes of the 4th Division--the stormers all along the walls were ready. A mad babel broke the former silence or semi-silence, portfires flashed in all directions, while fireballs were hurled into the ditches, lighting the way of the stormers. Pandemonium was let loose at Badajoz that night. A cloudy, star-strewn sky looked down upon horrors which one hopes may never be repeated. For on the side of the French was shown great bravery and demoniacal cunning. Every artifice of the besieged was employed, while on the side of the British soldiers a mad, a frantic courage was displayed. What if mines did burst and blow hundreds to pieces? Their comrades dashed down into the ditch without hesitation, and cast themselves into the selfsame breach where the tragedy had been perpetrated. What if the enemy did cast bags of gunpowder into the confused ranks of the stormers? It was all the more inducement to them to dash onward.