"At last, my boys!" said Captain O'Hare. The men of his company were flushed with excitement. At last! The weary waiting of two months was at an end; the enemy were upon them; and now every man tingled with the joy of the fight to come, and greedily watched for the foe. The officers, looking along their ranks, could not but be struck with the wonderful change. Gone the blank despair, gone the sullen discontent, gone the hang-dog look; every man's face was lit up, every man's eyes flashed, every man stood erect with an air of high-hearted staunchness that had not been seen for many a day.
"There they are!" cried Pomeroy, whose keen eyes had descried Colbert's hussars advancing cautiously over the hill-top.
At this moment the bugle sounded for the last companies of the 95th to retire across the bridge and occupy the defensive positions allotted to them. The men marched with alacrity; it was certain there must be a fight now. Jack's was the rearmost company but one. It had only reached the middle of the bridge when the 15th Hussars came riding behind in hot haste, and the infantry were in imminent danger of being trampled down. The French were pressing on in such force that the hussars, wholly outnumbered, had been hurriedly withdrawn. Unsupported, the 95th were too weak to withstand a charge of cavalry; they must retire, and there was no time to lose.
"Hurry your stumps!" shouted a trooper as he passed Wilkes.
"No hurry!" said the corporal coolly, looking over his shoulder.
But behind them Colbert's hussars and chasseurs had swept down on to the bridge and ridden into the rear-most company. Some of the latter were cut down, half were captured, the rest succeeded in gaining the farther bank, and joined their comrades behind the vineyard walls.
"A close shave, mates!" said Wilkes. "But let 'em come on; we're ready."
General Colbert, a young and gallant officer, and reputed the handsomest man in the French army, had reached the bridge, and saw that the slopes on the other side were held by artillery and what appeared to be a small infantry escort. All the regiments but the 28th were by this time concealed from view. Burning to distinguish himself, and anxious to emulate the successful charge of Franceschi's dragoons at Mansilla a few days before, Colbert did not wait to reconnoitre the position and discover the actual strength of his enemy, but ranged his leading regiment four abreast, and led them straight for the bridge. Paget's guns played briskly on the French horse until, with the dip in the road, they sank below the line of fire; then the hidden infantry followed up with steady volleys from the walls and hedges. But the French were barely within range. The majority of the troopers escaped injury, cleared the bridge, and dashed up the hill, to carry, as they thought, all before them. Then the men of Paget's Reserve showed their mettle. The 28th were drawn across the road; the 52nd and the 95th were out of sight behind the vineyard walls; and the French horsemen fell into the fatal trap. They suddenly found themselves in the midst of a hail of bullets from left, and right, and front. For a brief moment they struggled on; then Tom Plunket, leaping the wall and flinging himself flat on the slope, fired two marvellous shots which killed Colbert and his aide-de-camp in succession, whereupon the whole brigade wheeled about and fled madly back to the bridge, leaving the road strewed with their killed and wounded.
Cheer after cheer broke from the ranks of the exultant British infantry. Many of the men wished to leap the walls and pursue the baffled enemy, and had to be pulled back like hounds straining at the leash. Not a man had been lost since they left the bridge, and Paget's "Well done, Riflemen!" was like wine to their hearts.
But the fray was not yet over. Lahoussaye's dragoons swept down to the river, avoided the fatal bridge, forded the stream at several points, and tried to make their way over the rocky ground and through the vineyards. Finding this impossible, they dismounted and advanced on foot in skirmishing order, meeting with a spirited response from the 52nd and 95th, whom they first encountered. Then, as the afternoon wore on, Merle's light regiments of the line came into sight, and in column formation marched forward with loud cries to cross the bridge. For a few moments the 52nd were in danger of being swept upon and overwhelmed, but the six guns from the battery above opened a raking fire on the massed columns of French, and drove them back pell-mell to the other side. For an hour longer the French sharpshooters kept up a skirmish with the 95th and 52nd; then, as darkness fell, they recognized the hopelessness of their attack, gave up the contest, and hastened down the slopes to the eastern bank of the Cua.