The cluster Tony was attached to stopped among tall shrubs with crimson flowers of a heavy scent, with nothing between them and the white houses but a bare strip of dusty soil, and it became evident that they were waiting for something, for the firing slackened. Then further away to the right men sprang out into the open, straggling by twos and threes as they ran towards the town. The smoke grew thicker along the white walls, and some went down, while the dust they fell in splashed and spurted as a still pool would do under a driving hail. Still, more came on behind them, and Tony was struggling with an impulse to shout aloud when, from the whole front of the Sin Verguenza, there broke out a crash of riflery. He gasped as the smoke rolled down, for his desire to see had become almost overwhelming, and then as the firing slackened again it became evident that the little white forms were running still.
There were, however, not many of them now, and Tony grasped their purpose when they swept in close beneath the dazzling wall, while Appleby, who stood upright, with the glasses at his eyes, said something hoarsely in evident approbation. Once more there was a crackle of firing, and the smoke grew thick, while when it cleared the dusty strip was empty save for the white objects which lay still here and there. Tony surmised that the others had found entrance into the town by a narrow lane, or through the house of a friendly citizen.
A minute or two later this became evident, for the crash of firing grew furious on the roofs above the gap, and Appleby, who thrust his glasses into their case, was shouting hoarsely. Rising by twos and threes the men sprang out from among the flowering shrubs, and Tony saw the low walls and clumps of aloes become alive with scurrying forms. They seemed to move independently and without formation, though Appleby, with hand swung up, was shouting in Castilian, and Maccario went by pointing with a Spanish infantry officer’s sword. The gleam of it in the intense sunlight dazzled Tony’s eyes, and he stood still, uncertain what was going on, and gasping with excitement, when Appleby’s hand fell on his shoulder.
“I can’t tell you to hold off now we’re going in,” he said. “Still, it’s devilishly risky. You’ll not be unnecessarily rash, Tony.”
He sprang forward with three or four more at his heels, and Tony found himself running a few yards behind him. He could see that the Sin Verguenza were following, but save that they ran with wide spaces between them they seemed to keep no order, and to have only one purpose, to cross the perilous bare space as rapidly as they could.
The time that cost them appeared interminable, but it became evident that a few at least of those who had gained an entry into the town were firing on the cazadores who held the mouth of the carretera, and in another minute or two they swept up to it and stopped again, gasping in the smoke, with high white walls above them, and a mound of soil and torn-up pavement meshed with wires close in front of them. Tony remembered he had heard that in these days of magazine rifles and hopper-fed guns an attack of the kind was foredoomed to fail, but it seemed that the Sin Verguenza meant to try it, for already Maccario was half-way up the slope, with Appleby, pistol in hand, close behind him, and while a savage cry went up a wave of scrambling men seemed to toss together and roll on. It swept up to the crest of the barrier, and plunged into the smoke, and the cazadores wavered, turned, and fled. They were outnumbered, and, as it transpired later, had been galled by a fire from the roofs above, while Appleby eventually discovered a cartridge partly torn to pieces stuck immovably in the chamber of their quick-firing gun.
In the meanwhile Appleby was grimed with perspiration, smoke, and dust, while his hand was blackened by the fouling from the pistol. Strung to a tension that was too great for nervous excitement, he moved, as it were, with an automatic precision and collectedness, grasping the import of each turn of the struggle with a dispassionate perspicacity, which in less eventful moments he would have been incapable of. The faculty of swift deduction and decision may have been born in him, but it was, at least, evident to the Sin Verguenza, for even then in the stress of desperate effort they seemed to comprehend and obey him. Now and then Maccario had shouted hoarse questions to him, and though the answers apparently came without reflection the leader of the Sin Verguenza concurred when he grasped their purport.
It was by his order the shattered leading company flung itself into the houses when the Sin Verguenza were met by an enfilading volley as they reeled into the calle. The street might have proved a death-trap while the cazadores held the windows, but one could pass along the roofs, and the troops came out headlong when the Sin Verguenza descended upon them from above. Then they in turn found the calle too hot to hold them when they faced the fire of the second company which had taken shelter in the doorways. It was strewn with huddled objects lying upon the hot stones when they fled out of it, and a few minutes later Appleby stopped close by where Tony stood in the larger plaza. Tony’s face was set and white, though there was a curious gleam in his eyes, and he seemed to shiver a little as he glanced back up the glaring street. It was very still now, a narrow gap between the white walls that were ridged with shattered green lattices, but filmy wisps of vapor still drifted out of the doorways.
“We have got in, but it has cost you a good deal,” he said.
Appleby said nothing, but Maccario, who came up, and following Tony’s gaze glanced at the huddled figures on the stones, made a little comprehensive gesture.