At last even this was hushed, but to it succeeded the far more horrifying sounds of rapine and of murder; the forked flames of burning houses rose here and there amidst the black darkness of the night; and through the crackling of the timbers, and the falling crash of roofs, the heart-rending shriek of women rent the very air.

Officers pressed forward, but in vain were their efforts to restrain their men; the savage cruelty of the moment knew no bounds of restraint.
More than one gallant fellow perished in his fruitless endeavor to enforce obedience; and the most awful denunciations were now uttered against those before whom, at any other time, they dared not mutter.
Thus passed the long night, far more terrible to me than all the dangers of the storm itself, with all its death and destruction dealing around it.

I know not if I slept: if so, the horrors on every side were pictured in my dreams; and when the gray dawn was breaking, the cries from the doomed city were still ringing in my ears.

Close around me the scene was still and silent; the wounded had been removed during the night, but the thickly-packed dead lay side by side where they fell.

It was a fearful sight to see them as, blood-stained and naked (for already the camp-followers had stripped the bodies), they covered the entire breach.
From the rampart to the ditch, the ranks lay where they had stood in life.
A faint phosphoric flame flickered above their ghastly corpses, making even death still more horrible.