In the narrow entrance of the Calle de San Gil, and in the archway of Cineja, there were cannon to restrain the enemy's advance. I was sent to serve these pieces, with other soldiers of the Estremadura regiment, because there were scarcely any artillerymen left. When I took leave of Augustine, who remained in the San Francisco in the face of the enemy, we embraced, believing that we should never see each other again.
Don José de Montoria, finding himself in the barricade of La Cruz del Coso, got a gunshot in the leg, and had to retire; but leaning against the wall of a house next to the arch of Cineja, he kept on fighting for some time, until he brought on a hemorrhage, and at last finding himself very faint, he called me, and said to me,—
"Señor de Araceli, something is in my eyes. I cannot see anything. Curse this blood, how fast it runs out when it is most necessary to keep it. Won't you lend me a hand?"
"Señor," I said, running to him, and holding him up, "it would be better for you to retire to your lodging."
"No, here is where I want to be. But, Señor de Araceli, if I keep on bleeding, where the devil is all this blood going? It seems to me as if my legs are stuffed with cotton. I am falling to the ground like an empty bag."
He made tremendous efforts of endurance, but almost lost consciousness, more from the serious nature of his wound, than merely from loss of blood, after being without food and sleep, and in such trouble during these past days. Although he begged us to leave him there against the wall, so that he should not miss a single detail of the battle, we carried him to his lodging, which was also in the Coso, at the corner of the Calle del Refugio. The family had been installed in an upper room. The house was all full of wounded, and the numbers of bodies deposited there very nearly obstructed the entrance. It was difficult to get through the narrow doorway and the rooms within, because the men who had gone there to die, crowded the place, and it was not easy to distinguish between the living and the dead.
Montoria said, when we entered there, "Don't carry me upstairs, boys, where my family is. Leave me here below. Here I see a counter which just suits my purpose."
We put him where he said. This lower story was a shop. Several of the wounded and victims of the epidemic who had died that day were under the counter, and many of the sick were lying upon the infected ground on pieces of cloth.
"Let us see," he said, "if there is any charitable soul who will try a little to stop the gap where the blood comes out."
A woman came forward to care for the wounded man. It was Mariquilla Candiola.