At nine o’clock there was a faint tap at the gate. “Narigudo!” someone whispered; and in a moment, louder and impatiently, “Narigudo! Art thou asleep? Open!”
Alberto almost laughed. Then he drew back his shoulders and said, sharply: “Not a shot till I say the word! As for you, stupids, you see the gate! And your Narigudo—he is well boxed up!”
There was a quick scuffling below. Evidently the bandits had run back under the bottom of the tower, puzzled by this turn of affairs. For half an hour there was a trying silence; then a sudden rush, and something smote the gate with a tremendous crash.
“Not yet!” cried Alberto. “Wait for the word!”
But the robbers were not to be fooled. If there were really defenders, they would have fired before now; and again the battering-ram made the great gate tremble.
Alberto’s finger itched on the trigger. Should he shoot? Before he could reload, they might have the gate down. And then——?
He leaned the long musket against the wall and crept down into the courtyard just as the thunderous crash came again. Evidently the gate was beginning to give.
Another smash, and a leaf of the gate began to creak with that ominous, growing creak that goes before a fall. Just then there was a little flash in the courtyard, and a queer s-s-sizz-sizz, pop! bang! Bang! B-b-b-b-ang! The gate reeled and fell outward, and with the roar of a landslide a hundred terrified mules burst through the gap, trampling and scattering like chaff the knot of bandits gathered to burst in.
And then from far up the cobble-paved highway came a stentorian yell, and pistol shots, and a new clamor of iron hoofs. Two minutes later Don Ygnacio and his men swept into the courtyard, where a collapsed young hero lay beside a vast litter of bursted firecrackers.