mplish this during the darkest hour of the night without
attracting a certain amount of attention was practically an
impossibility, let their precautions against so doing be as elaborate as
they might. The wonder was that they did not attract a great deal more
attention than they actually did, for although the strictest silence was
enjoined upon the members of the party, the tramp of forty men and the
unavoidable jingle and rattle of their accoutrements sounded appallingly
loud in George's sensitive ear as they passed along through ways so
confined that two vehicles could only have passed each other with the
utmost difficulty, and where the high walls and overhanging upper
stories reflected back every sound in the breathless stillness of the
night. But it was the hour when people sleep most heavily, and although
there can be little doubt that the sounds of the party's progress must
have disturbed a good many people along the route, so complete was the
sense of security in the city that only very few troubled themselves to
rise from their beds to investigate the cause of the disturbance. And
of those few it is safe to say that not one really suspected the actual
state of affairs at the moment. Thus it was that the daring intruders
actually succeeded in eventually reaching the Grand Plaza and securing
the command of its every approach without raising a general alarm.

But of course it was not possible that such a state of affairs could
endure very long, nor indeed was any serious effort made to prolong it,
for, with one party of his men in possession of the Grand Plaza, and
another holding the shore battery, George felt that for all practical
purposes the town was his, therefore so soon as the Grand Plaza had been
secured all further attempts at secrecy and concealment were abandoned;
the men moved hither and thither without restraint, and orders were
given in tones which, while not unnecessarily loud, were still loud
enough to awaken people here and there in the houses facing the square
and apprise them that something quite out of the usual order of things
was happening. Men began to rise from their beds and go to their
windows to investigate, jalousies were thrown back here and there to
enable those behind them to obtain a better view, and when, in the dim
light afforded by some half a dozen lamps that were permitted to burn
all night in the Plaza, armed men were seen to be moving hither and
thither, with the feeble