For three hours that bombardment continued, and the walls stood in a
cloud of red dust and smoke. Rifle and machine gun bullets pattered over
every inch of it, and, unfailingly the heavy gun pounded its shells
through the windows.

One's heart melted at the idea that human beings were crouching inside
that volcano of death, and I said to myself, "Not even a fly can be
alive in that house."

No head showed at any window, no rifle cracked from window or roof in
reply. The house was dumb, lifeless, and I thought every one of those
men are dead.

It was then, and quite suddenly, that the possibilities of street
fighting flashed on me, and I knew there was no person in the house, and
said to myself, "They have smashed through the walls with a hatchet and
are sitting in the next house, or they have long ago climbed out by the
skylight and are on a roof half a block away." Then the thought came to
me--they have and hold the entire of Sackville Street down to the Post
Office. Later on this proved to be the case, and I knew at this moment
that Sackville Street was doomed.

I continued to watch the bombardment, but no longer with the anguish
which had before torn me. Near by there were four men, and a few yards
away, clustered in a laneway, there were a dozen others. An agitated
girl was striding from the farther group to the one in which I was, and
she addressed the men in the most obscene language which I have ever
heard. She addressed them man by man, and she continued to speak and cry
and scream at them with all that obstinate, angry patience of which only