She was saying this when Manuela Sancho came, carrying two pitchers of water for the wounded. The poor wretches threw themselves from their beds, disputing even to blows over the water.
"No pushing, no scrambling, señors!" said Manuela, laughing. "There is water enough for all. Our side is winning. It has cost a little labor to drive the French from the alcove, and now they are disputing half of the hall, having gained one half of it. They do not wish to leave us a kitchen or a staircase. The whole place is filled with the dead."
Mariquilla turned pale with the horror of it.
"I am thirsty," she said to me.
I immediately tried to get some water for her from Manuela; but as the last glass she had was in use, quenching soldiers' thirst, as she went from mouth to mouth with it, I took, in order to lose no time, one of the cups which Candiola had in his pile.
"Eh, you meddler," he said, shaking his fist at me, "leave that cup here."
"I am getting it to give water to the señorita," I answered indignantly. "Are these things so valuable, Señor Candiola?"
The miser did not reply, but did not oppose my giving his daughter a drink. After her thirst was quenched, a wounded soldier reached out his hands eagerly for the cup, and, lo! it began to go the rounds also, passing from mouth to mouth. When I went to wait upon my comrades, Don Jeronimo followed me with his eyes, and watched with bad grace the forced loan that was so slow in returning to his hands.
Manuela Sancho was right in saying that our side was winning. The French, dislodged from the main floor of the house, had retired to the one below, where they continued their defence. When I descended, all the interest of the battle was centred in the kitchen, disputed with much bloodshed, but the rest of the house was in our power. Many bodies of French and Spanish covered the gory floor. Some soldiers and patriots, furious at not being able to conquer that dismal kitchen, whence such a fire was pouring, hurled themselves forward into it, defending themselves with their bayonets; and although a goodly number of them perished, their courageous act decided the matter, for behind them others could come, and then all that the room could hold.