Part 28

But Jack had long since seen that, unless he could deal them a harder blow than any he had recently been able to strike, he must inevitably be swamped by superior numbers. Even though the explosions should slay a hundred of the French to every ten of his own men, the former could be continually replaced, while a loss to him was irreparable. He could hold the enemy in check for the moment, but a time must come when his gallant little force must be overwhelmed and annihilated--unless he could effect some diversion.

His greatest danger came from these formidable batteries, to which he could make no effective reply. Under cover of their fire the French could at any time repeat the rush across the street by which they had carried Tobar. Was there no way by which the guns could be silenced?

During the two hours' bombardment Jack had spent many anxious minutes in thinking out this problem. What were the chances? The explosion of the fougasse, followed by that of the Y mines, would not only deal immense destruction, but would also, he hoped, have a tremendous moral effect. Could he not make a rush for the guns while the French were demoralized and at sixes and sevens? Would there be time to spike them? Ought he to diminish his little force even by the minimum number of men necessary to perform the feat? He now had no more than 180 men all told. The French, he computed, had numbered nearly 700 at the beginning of the day. Could he, with, say, 50 men, hope to penetrate their ranks and return in safety?

"It must be tried," he said to himself, and from that moment bent all his energies to ensure the success of his daring scheme. Before firing the Y mines he collected his whole disposable force, and, amid a breathless silence, addressed them.

"Hombres," he said, "there is one thing for us to do. The French guns must be spiked. I will lead the way. I want fifty men to follow me. It will be dangerous, perhaps fatal work. Who will volunteer, for Saragossa and Spain?"

Every man held out his hand. Jack felt proud of the unswerving patriotism and courage of his troops. The trouble was, not to accept, but to refuse their offers. He quickly selected fifty of the strongest. Ten of these he sent to find long nails and hammers, and they soon returned, bearing tools of all sizes and shapes. The rest were armed with muskets and bayonets. Jack gave as many as he could pistols in addition.

"Now, hombres," he said, "when the mines explode, the French in the houses will be destroyed, and those behind them dismayed. We must seize that very moment to rush into the Casa Vega. I shall go first. You must follow close upon me as rapidly as you can. I intend to make for the guns. We shall spike them. We shall then rush back through the ruins and the houses beyond the Casa Vallejo and take the French there in the rear. Don Cristobal will still defend his barricade. Antonio here will hold the rest of you in readiness to sweep upon the French in Vallejo and the street. If I am overcome, and you cannot hold the second barricades, retreat to the Casa Alvarez and fight to the death."

The Spaniards were eager to start, and almost too impatient to wait for the explosion. When that occurred, the larger debris hurled into the air had scarcely reached the ground before Jack, followed by his devoted fifty, dashed through the dust that was swirling in vast eddies from the ruins. Entering the Casa Vega by a low side doorway, almost suffocated by the pungent fumes and the clouds of dust, they scrambled through the ruins, springing over stones and beams, broken furniture, burning draperies, every man taking his own course and trying to avoid impeding his comrades. A few seconds brought them to what had been the party-wall of the house. Bearing to the left, Jack dashed into the charred ruins of the adjoining house, through the midst of a few Frenchmen who, injured but not killed by the explosion, were crawling painfully away. A glance to the right!--he saw that the next clearing was still held by the force supporting those who had rushed the houses; but they were in no sort of order, having scattered to seek shelter from the beams and stones that had descended upon them as from the crater of a volcano. A glance in front!--across the narrow street, in the wrecked house nearest the gun, Jack saw in an instant that he had a more formidable foe to reckon with. The French there, some 150 in number, had not been affected materially by the explosion; but it had taken them by surprise, and for the moment they were at a loss what they should do. Before they could realize what was happening, a band of fifty fierce yelling Spaniards, led by a young officer with sword in one hand and pistol in the other, was among them. A score fell at the first onset; the rest scattered to right and left of the Spaniards, and by the time they had collected their wits, and perceived how small was the party engaged in this desperate sortie, Jack and the first of his men were already engaged with the gunners. The onslaught was so sudden, and Jack was so intent on the work in hand, that he was scarcely conscious of what happened until afterwards. One of the gunners, in the urgency of the moment, picked up a linstock and raised it as a kind of club. Jack sprang straight at him, toppled him over by the mere force of his impact, and came upon another gunner, whose smoking musket showed that he had just fired. Him Jack cut down; the others meanwhile fell to the bayonets of the Spaniards. The gun was reached. Jack sped past, while a burly Catalan, with two strokes of his huge mallet, drove a nail into the vent. Then the whole party, diminished by half a dozen who had fallen, swept on across the street towards the spot where stood the two guns that commanded the Casa Vallejo.

The few seconds occupied by the tussle about the first gun had given the gunners at the other two time to form up. At the same time the French behind Jack had recovered from their surprise and were swarming upon his track. Would he have time to complete his work? A few bullets pattered on the jagged remnants of walls still standing; but the French were too much afraid of hitting their own men to fire volleys, and those who did shoot were too flustered to take good aim. Amid a din of shouting, Jack dashed into the ruins on the far side of the street. Some two-score men were there drawn up ready to receive him. Fortunately they were on the French side of the epaulement that had been thrown across the ruins. Had they occupied the other side they could have held their assailants at bay long enough for the reserves to come up from the direction of Santa Engracia and take them in the rear.

In a moment the two bands met. The French were outnumbered, but for a few seconds they held their own around the guns. Then the Spaniards closed about them, and with their backs to the epaulement the valiant gunners fell, to the last man.

The first gun was quickly spiked. At the other a gallant pair of Frenchmen caused a momentary delay by their desperate defence. But they were in turn overpowered, and fell covered with wounds. A nail was driven home, and the hazardous exploit was complete.

But the peril was only just beginning. The sortie had been so sudden and impetuous that even if the French had been thrice as numerous the chances were on the side of the assailants. But they had now had time to rally. Sixty yards of ruins lay between the breathless Spaniards and the Casa Vallejo, which was strongly held by the French. Jack hoped that the diversion from the Casa Alvarez would keep these sufficiently employed; it was a race between him and the French who were now coming up from the rear of their position. For an instant he thought of retaining a few of his men and attempting to check the pursuit while the remainder ran on and stormed the French in Vallejo. But he saw in a flash that this exposed him to the danger of being headed off by the enemy, who would make greater speed along the comparatively clear street than he could make through the ruins. Without a moment's hesitation he bade his men run for their lives. That he was right was proved at once. Stalwart Poles and little voltigeurs were swarming along the roadway; Jack could see them through the gaps in the ruined walls, and hear them as they dashed along out of sight parallel with his own men. Would they outrun him? Would they succeed in joining hands with their countrymen in Vallejo, and meet him in such force that his own gallant band, now diminished by half, would fall a helpless prey to them?

There broke out at this instant, ahead of him, a pandemonium of cries, which seemed too great to proceed even from the mingled horde of French and Spanish in Vallejo. The foremost of his men were now at grips there with the enemy. He dashed into the house, and found a desperate combat in progress there, but was surprised to see no Frenchmen upon his flank. He had expected to find those who had rushed along the road now pouring into the house through the gap in the walls. But the French in the house were engaged on two sides; on one side by Jack's own party, on the other by the second sortie-party, under Antonio's command. That was not all. Amid the din Jack heard the stentorian voice of Jorge Arcos shouting words of encouragement to his men and of obloquy to the French; immediately afterwards the bellow of Tio Jorge echoed through the ruins. Jack understood now what had so suddenly checked the French in the street. How the great mob-leaders had come upon the scene he knew not; it was sufficient that they had come in the nick of time. They had evidently manned the nearest barricade, and, battered as that had been, it was good enough yet to afford a strong defence. With a sense of relief Jack threw himself into the midst of the fray; in a few moments the French in Vallejo were accounted for. Emerging into the street, Jack saw his bulky friend chasing the French back towards the spiked gun. The sudden sally over the barricade, when they least expected it, and when their ranks were in the disorder of pursuit, had been too much for the enemy. They gave way before Tio Jorge's impetuous rush; then, as Jack, with a feeling of elation that once more the enemy were foiled, arrived at the barricade, he heard Jorge Arcos shout to his men to retire, and they came pelting back, followed by a few wild shots from the discomfited French.

"Viva la Espana! Viva Saragossa! Viva el Senor Ingles! Viva Tio Jorge!"

The air rang with the jubilant shouts of the Spaniards, panting, dishevelled, many of them utterly exhausted. A strange calm succeeded the turmoil. Scarcely a live Frenchman was now to be seen; the ground was strewn with dead, and with wounded whom Jack did not dare to remove. He knew that the lull could only be temporary; the French would undoubtedly send for reinforcements. After their successive checks they would not be content until they could bring absolutely crushing force to bear upon the obstinate defenders. The crisis was still to come, and Jack, after warmly congratulating Tio Jorge and Jorge Arcos, as well as Antonio, on the brilliant success they had done so much to bring about, returned to the Casa Alvarez to concert means of meeting the most formidable attack of all.

Before he reached the house he saw a girl flying towards him, her mantilla streaming behind.

"Oh, Jack, Jack," she cried, "I thought you would be killed!"

"Juanita!" he exclaimed. "But you should not be here. It is no place for you. You ought not to have run into danger. Come back with me at once."

"I came to help. I will help! Tia Teresa died last night; I have no one now. I can do something. And you--you are hurt! Oh, Jack, you are covered with blood! Come, come, at once, let me do something for you."

"I didn't know it," said Jack simply. He brushed his hand across his brow; it was smeared with blood. Looking at his coat he saw blood trickling through a rent in the sleeve. "It's nothing," he said. "I don't feel a scratch. If you must help, Juanita--and it is brave of you,--why, there are many others who need attention more than I."

"You first, Jack. Come at once; I insist! How can you lead your men if you are blinded with blood? Jack, you are doing grandly; it is splendid!"

"You are right, Senorita," put in Tio Jorge, who had come up with them. "All the men say the English Senor is a hero, and, por Dios! the French will never get the better of him."

By this time they had reached the house, where Juanita insisted on bathing and binding up Jack's wounds before she attended to any of the others. Jorge Arcos had been slightly wounded in the dash across the barricade, and afterwards Jack remembered, with a strange glow, the roughly-expressed gratitude of the savage innkeeper as Juanita tenderly assisted him.

While she went about on her errand of mercy, Jack consulted with his lieutenants. The new-comers recognized him unhesitatingly as their leader, and declared that they would remain with him and support him to the utmost of their power. None doubted that the next fight would be the most terrible of all; it was only a question how long an interval would elapse before it came. The Spaniards had lost some forty men since the morning; they were all on the verge of collapse; only Don Cristobal's men, who had been unmolested at the Vega barricade, were for the moment fit for active work.

To ascertain the movements of the French, Jack went with Tio Jorge and Jorge Arcos to the roof of the Casa Hontanon, that adjoined the empty shell of Vallejo. From that coign of vantage they could overlook the whole district. After a time they saw in the distance a compact body of some 200 men approaching through the ruins from the direction of the Franciscan convent. With great difficulty they were dragging a gun over the heaps of obstacles. It must have been taken from one of the batteries now mounted near the Coso. Slowly they approached; nearly an hour elapsed between their first appearance and the placing of the gun at the end of the street facing the Tobar barricade, on the same spot whence the spiked gun had been withdrawn.

As soon as the gun was fairly in position, a renewal of the bombardment of the barricade was commenced, and the sound of heavy shots showed that an attack was being simultaneously made on the Vega barricade.

"We can't hold Vallejo any longer," said Jack. "We shall be cut off from support."

"Not so, Senor," said Arcos at once. "I will hold it with twenty men. If the French capture it, our flank will be at their mercy."

"But if the French attack in force you cannot escape."

"Caramba, Senor! What does that matter? A man must die, and I vow I'd rather die fighting for Saragossa than of fever in the cellars--or of rage in a French prison."

"You are a true son of Spain, hombre," exclaimed Jack, and the gleam in Arcos's eyes showed that he wished for no higher praise. "The barricades, now--it is useless to attempt to repair them?"

"Si, Senor," replied Tio Jorge, "but we can fill up the breaches with sacks and baskets of earth, if we push them out from the sides of the street."

"Very well. Will you see that that is done?"

Tio Jorge instantly departed on his errand. Arcos had already gone to select his twenty men for the perilous post in the ruins of Vallejo.

At half-past three in the afternoon the French cannonade suddenly ceased. Jack had placed his men in position, but as he saw that nearly a thousand men were being launched against scarcely more than two hundred, he felt that even the desperate valour of his patriotic troops could not prevail against such odds. But it never occurred to him, or to a single member of his gallant force, that there was any alternative to the one simple course--to hold on to the end. Palafox had entrusted him with the defence of that quarter; he would defend it to the last gasp, and he knew that no British officer in the same situation would have come to any other conclusion.

The attack had begun. In the two streets the French were rushing ten abreast at the barricades. In the ruins approaching Vega and Vallejo their formation was necessarily broken, but they swept forward with a dash and a courage which Jack, remembering their former failures, could not but regard as magnificent. The front ranks seemed to melt away under the fire of the defenders, who, well disciplined by their long experience, fired calmly and with deadly accuracy, wasting no powder, and watching the French advance in seeming unconcern. But though the enemy fell by scores, there was no halting now. They swarmed up to and through the breached barricades, and ran a race with death towards the grim skeletons of the shattered houses. For a few seconds there was a tense silence; the majority of the defenders had discharged their pieces and were either reloading or preparing to repel with the bayonet. Then the opposing forces met; there was a sudden babel of noise, steel clashing against steel, pistols cracking, men shouting fiercely in their several tongues, and some crying out in the agony of death. The street was narrow; for a time the French could make but little impression on the unbroken front opposed to them, but Jack, from his post on the roof of Hontanon, saw that it was now a question of the most desperate close fighting. As soon as the head of the attacking column was lost to view beneath him, he hurried down to take his part in the tremendous struggle.

It was as he had feared. As soon as the French swarmed over the Vallejo barricade, the Casa Vallejo and its garrison became completely isolated. At the moment of his arrival a furious fight was proceeding at the inner barricade. The French charge, led by a gigantic Polish officer, had driven the Spaniards behind their last defence and threatened to dislodge them from that. Jack at once summoned twenty men from the reserve stationed at the Casa Alvarez, and with them threw himself into the breach, where, amid fragments of beams, displaced sacks and baskets of earth, and the debris of part of the wall of Vallejo thrown down by the explosion of the fougasse, a stern hand-to-hand fight was being waged. It was almost impossible, in the turmoil and rush, to distinguish friends from foes, but in the centre of the human whirlpool the huge form of the Polish officer was conspicuous. He was wielding a large bar of iron, which he had picked up among the ruins, and even at that moment Jack marvelled at the man's immense strength. Disdaining the blows aimed at him by men who looked mere pigmies beside him, he was step by step forcing a way through the barricade towards the open space fronting the Casa Alvarez. Jack, with his reinforcements, had arrived not a moment too soon. As he pushed through towards the spot where the deadly iron, wielded with as much ease as though it had been a malacca cane, rose and fell with fatal regularity, the onward rush of the French was stayed for a moment. Another second would have brought the two leaders together; but Jack was not yet to cross weapons with the Pole. At the very instant when they came within striking distance there was a terrible crash; Pole and Englishman started instinctively. A huge mass of masonry had fallen from Vallejo upon the outer barricade, into the midst of the crowded ranks of the Frenchmen, of whom a score at least were buried beneath the ruins. Even above the clash of weapons, the shouts of the combatants, and the groans of the wounded, a shrill mocking voice could be heard exulting in the deadly effect of the avalanche, and raining frantic curses upon the French. In the moment of surprise the enemy gave way. Glancing up, Jack saw the figure of the madwoman, the demented Dona Mercedes Ortega, giddily poised upon a jagged corner of masonry that threatened every instant to follow the rest into the street below. The poor creature had seen from the Casa Alvarez that the outer wall of Vallejo had been so breached that a push would precipitate it into the street upon the barricade. Escaping from Juanita's detaining hand, as Jack afterwards learnt, she had crept from the roof of the Casa Hontanon on to the wall of Vallejo; had leapt from point to point of the uneven summit, reached the corner overlooking the street, and with the strength of frenzy had pushed the masonry down, working more havoc among the enemy than had been wrought by many an elaborately-prepared mine.

While she stood on her precarious eminence, wildly gesticulating in her insane triumph, there was the report of a musket from down the street. She swayed for a brief moment upon the crumbling wall, uttered one heart-rending shriek of "Juanino!" and fell lifeless upon the ruins below.

The interruption was but momentary. At the instant when the hapless Dona Mercedes fell, Jorge Arcos, desperately wounded, struggled from the ruins of Vallejo, followed by half a dozen of his men, all showing terrible signs of the struggle they had made to hold the position. While a portion of Jack's force continued their gallant attempt to repel the French from the barricade, the rest swarmed into the house, only to be driven out again with heavy loss by the enemy, who, backed by a large force in the ruins, had now an overwhelming superiority in numbers. In the street the gigantic Pole, swept away from before Jack, returned to the attack at the head of a compact band of his compatriots, and the Spaniards, still fighting furiously, were driven back inch by inch through the gap in the barricade, their retirement being hastened by shots from the walls of the Casa Tobar, which, together with its neighbour, the ruined Casa Vega, had fallen into French hands. Save for the Casa Alvarez and the surrounding streets, the whole of the quarter towards Santa Engracia had now been captured, and Jack, extricating himself from the melee, saw that it was time to play his last card.

"Senor," said Antonio, running up at this moment, "Don Cristobal sends me to say that he still holds his barricade, but that he will not be able to do so for more than a few minutes longer."

"You are the man I want, Antonio," replied Jack. "Run to the Casa Alvarez, send every man of the reserve to me, and go into the cellars and fire the last of our mines. Don't wait; do it at once."