But an instant’s hesitation, friend and foe being fairly intermingled, was fatal to his purpose; the venerable culverin remained silent, and the gunner met hand-to-hand a figure that sprang from the incoming host. Simultaneously the rapid firing of a new wave of besiegers from the other side of the castle threw once more a pall of smoke over the scene, and, beneath its mantle, the two men were like figures struggling in a fog, feeling rather than seeing each other’s blade, divining by touch the cut, pass or aggressive thrust.
“Faugh!” laughed the gunner. “They’ll kill us with smoke.”
The discharge of small arms gradually ceased; the fresh breeze again cleared the crest of the mount, 456 showing the white walls of the structure which had been so obstinately defended; the valley, where the batteries now lay silent, having spoken their thundering prologue, and the alien flag, the regimental colors of the invaders, floating from the upper walls. Below on the road toward the city, a band of white across the table land, successive spots of smoke momentarily appeared and were succeeded, after a considerable interval, by the rub-a-dub of rifles. From the disenchanting distance the charge of a body of men, in the attempt to dislodge a party entrenched in a ditch, lost the tragic aspect of warfare, and the soldiers who fell seemed no larger than the toy figures of a nursery game.
With the brightening of the summit to the light of day, eagerly the two combatants near the copper gun gazed for the first time into each other’s eyes, and, at that trenchant glance, a tremor crossed the features of the gunner, and his arm, with its muscles of steel, suddenly became inert, powerless.
“Mon Dieu!––’Tis Ernest––little Ernest!” he exclaimed, wonderingly.
For all that his opponent’s sword, ominously red from the fierce first assault at the wall, was at his breast, he made no effort to oppose its threatening point, when a grape-shot, swifter than the blade, fairly struck the gunner. With blood streaming from his shoulder, he swayed from side to side, passing his hand before his eyes as one who questions oracular evidence, and then sank to the earth with 457 an arm thrown over the tube of copper. Above his bronzed face the light curls waved like those of a Viking; though his clothes were dyed with the sanguinary hue and his chest rose and fell with labored breathing, it was with an almost quizzical glance he regarded the other who stood as if turned to stone.
“That was not so easily done, Ernest,” he said, not unkindly, “but surprise broke down my guard.”
“Before God, it was not I!” cried the soldier, starting from a trance.
“And if it were!” With his free arm he felt his shoulder. “I believe you are right,” he observed, coolly. “Swords break no bones.”
“I will get a surgeon,” said the other, as he turned.