In the meanwhile, Mark Divès, at the end of about half an hour, had made the round of the ravine, and from the back of his tall horse was just beginning to discover the two companies of Germans with grounded arms, a hundred paces behind the guns, which were firing on the entrenchments. Then, approaching the mountaineers, he said to them, in a stifled voice, while the explosions of the cannon were awakening every echo in the gorge, and in the distance the clamours of the assault resounded: "Comrades, you will charge the infantry with fixed bayonets; I and my men will undertake the rest. Is that understood?"
"Yes, that's understood."
"Well, then, forward!"
The whole body advanced in good order towards the outskirts of the wood, with the tall Piercy of Soldatenthal at their head. Nearly at the same instant there was the "verda" (challenge) of a sentinel; then two shots; then a great shout, "Hurrah for France!" and the heavy dull sound of rushing footsteps; the brave mountaineers were falling upon the enemy like a troop of wolves!
Divès, standing upright in his stirrups, with his long nose and bristling moustaches, was laughingly looking on:
"It's all right," he kept saying to himself.
It was a fearful conflict; the ground trembled under it. The Germans were not, any more than the confederates, opening fire; all was passing in silence; the clashing of bayonets, the heavy thud of the musket-stocks, intermingled from time to time by a shot, cries of rage, groans, tumult; nothing else was heard.
The smugglers, with outstretched necks, sword in hand, sniffed the carnage, impatiently awaiting the signal from their leader.
"Now it is our turn," said Marc. "The cannon be our prize!"
And forth from the woody fastnesses, with their long cloaks floating behind them like wings, leaning eagerly forward on their saddles, and their swords poised, onward they came, rushing like the wind.