nine
o'clock
As the sun rose the great golden cross , rising high out of the wilderness of houses , shone more and more brightly under the brightening sky , and millions of eyes looked upon it from within the city and from without with feelings far asunder as triumph and defeat . At daybreak the last meal had been eaten by the defenders of the city . To supply it almost every animal left in London had been sacrificed , and the last drop of liquor was drunk , even to the last bottle of wine in the Royal cellars , which the King shared with his two commanders-in-chief , Lord Roberts and Lord Wolseley , in the presence of the troops on the balcony of Buckingham Palace . At nine o'clock the King and Queen attended service in St. Paul 's , and when they left the Cathedral half an hour later the besiegers on the heights were astounded to hear the bells of all the steeples left standing in London ring out in a triumphant series of peals which rippled away eastward and westward from St. Paul 's and Westminster Abbey , caught up and carried on by steeple after steeple , until from Highgate to Dulwich , and from Hammersmith to Canning Town , the beleaguered and starving city might have been celebrating some great triumph or deliverance . The astonished besiegers could only put the extraordinary manifestation down to joy on the part of the citizens at the near approaching end of the siege ; but before the bells of London had been ringing for half an hour this fallacious idea was dispelled from their minds in a very stern and summary fashion . Since nightfall there had been no communication with the secret agents of the League in the various towns of England and Scotland . At ten o'clock a small company of Cossacks spurred and flogged their jaded horses up the northern slope of Muswell Hill , on which the Tsar had fixed his headquarters .