six o'clock
Together with a knot of others , who like himself had run forth half dressed , Mahony stopped and waited , in extreme anxiety ; and , while he stood , the stars went out , one by one , as though a finger-tip touched them . The diggers ' response to the volley of the attacking party was easily distinguished : it was a dropping fire , and sounded like a thin hail-shower after a peal of thunder . Within half an hour all was over : the barricade had fallen , to cheers and laughter from the military ; the rebel flag was torn down ; huts and tents inside the enclosure were going up in flames . Towards six o'clock , just as the December sun , huge and fiery , thrust the edge of its globe above the horizon , a number of onlookers ran up the slope to all that was left of the ill-fated stockade . On the dust , bloodstains , now set hard as scabs , traced the route by which a wretched procession of prisoners had been marched to the Camp gaol . Behind the demolished barrier huts smouldered as heaps of blackened embers ; and the ground was strewn with stark forms , which lay about -- some twenty or thirty of them -- in grotesque attitudes . Some sprawled with outstretched arms , their sightless eyes seeming to fix the pale azure of the sky ; others were hunched and huddled in a last convulsion .