“Oh! if I had but my eyes!” Weiss impatiently exclaimed. He had broken his spectacles a while before, to his great sorrow. He had his double eye-glass still, but the perspiration was rolling down his face in such streams that it was impossible to keep it on his nose. His usual calm collectedness was entirely lost in his over-mastering passion; and thus, between his defective vision and his agitated nerves, many of his shots were wasted.
“Don’t hurry so, it is only throwing away powder,” said Laurent. “Do you see that man who has lost his helmet, over yonder by the grocer’s shop? Well, now draw a bead on him,—carefully, don’t hurry. That’s first-rate! you have broken his paw for him and made him dance a jig in his own blood.”
Weiss, rather pale in the face, gave a look at the result of his marksmanship.
“Put him out of his misery,” he said.
“What, waste a cartridge! Not, much. Better save it for another of ’em.”
The besiegers could not have failed to notice the remarkable practice of the invisible sharpshooter in the attic. Whoever of them showed himself in the open was certain to remain there. They therefore brought up re-enforcements and placed them in position, with instructions to maintain an unremitting fire upon the roof of the building. It was not long before the attic became untenable; the slates were perforated as if they had been tissue paper, the bullets found their way to every nook and corner, buzzing and humming as if the room had been invaded by a swarm of angry bees. Death stared them all in the face if they remained there longer.
“We will go downstairs,” said the lieutenant. “We can hold the first floor for awhile yet.” But as he was making for the ladder a bullet struck him in the groin and he fell. “Too late, doggone it!”
Weiss and Laurent, aided by the remaining soldiers, carried him below, notwithstanding his vehement protests; he told them not to waste their time on him, his time had come; he might as well die upstairs as down. He was still able to be of service to them, however, when they had laid him on a bed in a room of the first floor, by advising them what was best to do.
“Fire into the mass,” he said; “don’t stop to take aim. They are too cowardly to risk an advance unless they see your fire begin to slacken.”
And so the siege of the little house went on as if it was to last for eternity. Twenty times it seemed as if it must be swept away bodily by the storm of iron that beat upon it, and each time, as the smoke drifted away, it was seen amid the sulphurous blasts, torn, pierced, mangled, but erect and menacing, spitting fire and lead with undiminished venom from each one of its orifices. The assailants, furious that they should be detained for such length of time and lose so many men before such a hovel, yelled and fired wildly in the distance, but had not courage to attempt to carry the lower floor by a rush.