text:  Scaling-ladders were applied to the windows men mounted them thick as bees; fire-buckets were passed from hand to hand for the fire-engines had been long since destroyed by the cannonade; and there seemed to be some hope of saving the structure when a succession of agonizing screams fixed every eye on the convent where the fire had found its way to the stores of wood and oil and shot up like the explosion of gunpowder