A second explosion made him hasten still more eagerly.
"To the Casa Alvarez!" he repeated. "War to the knife!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Last Fight in Saragossa
The Last Muster—The Fougasse—A Forlorn Hope—Spiking the Guns—A Race with Death—A Sally—Solicitude—Jorge Arcos Volunteers—To the Bitter End—A Bolt from the Blue—The Last Sacrifice—The Courage of Despair—Truce
At the Casa Alvarez a stern fight was in progress. On the preceding day what Jack had foreseen had at length come to pass: the French had once more brought guns to bear on his position. Warned by their previous experience, they blinded their batteries in such a way that their gunners were protected from the muskets of the Spaniards on the roofs. They cleared a space at the end of the ruined block of which the Casa Vallejo formed a part, and there placed two guns; another was mounted at the end of the street between that house and the Casa Tobar; a fourth at the end of the street in which the Vega barricade was erected. It was clear to Jack that he could not hope to prevent the enemy from gaining a footing in the houses; all that he could do for the present was to await developments, and act as the need of the moment dictated.
But, to be prepared for emergencies, he rapidly constructed, beneath the floor of the Casa Vallejo, a fougasse—a shallow mine in the form of a truncated cone, with its axis inclined towards the point of attack. Over this he piled some tons of brickwork and stones which, in the explosion, would be hurled many yards to the front and flanks. With this, and the as yet unexploded Y-shaped mines beneath the Casas Tobar and Vega, he hoped to destroy the French who would rush the houses when the bombardment ceased, and thus to enable his men to retake the positions they must lose.
He had only 200 men now with him, and many of these were on their last legs. But when the rumour spread through the quarter that the French were preparing to make a serious attack, some fifty poor wretches, scarcely able to crawl, staggered from their squalid lodgings, and begged to be allowed to take part in the defence. They were a pitiful sight, gaunt and haggard, with ague-stricken limbs and fever-lit eyes. They were incapable of hand-to-hand fighting; many of them were too weak even to lift their muskets to their shoulders; but they could fire muskets rested on window-sills and through loopholes, and Jack, gladly as he would have spared them, was too hard-pressed to reject any aid, however slight. A score of women came forward, offering to load muskets for the men, and thus save time. Among them Jack recognized the lady he had seen as he came with Tio Jorge to take over his command. He remembered her attitude of frenzied grief; he recalled the fierce command she had laid upon her little boy. The child was no longer with her; the little fellow had died of fever a few days before. The poor creature had now lost father, brothers, husband, and son, and had come with the wild fury of a mad woman to wreak vengeance on the enemy.
About ten o'clock in the morning the French opened fire with all their guns upon the Casa Vallejo and the barricades. Jack made what reply he could from the roofs and windows, but the batteries were so well screened that the fire of his men was almost wholly ineffectual. Great gaps were soon made in the wall of the house and in the barricades, and seeing that the attempt to hold the latter in the face of the bombardment would entail a useless loss of life, Jack withdrew his men behind the Casas Vega and Tobar, and held them in readiness to rush into the houses when his mines had exploded. After two hours' bombardment the four guns ceased fire. Immediately afterwards three parties of French dashed forward in headlong charge. The Spaniards, who, on the cessation of the bombardment, had sped back to their posts, met the enemy with dauntless front. The Frenchmen in the streets fell rapidly under a hot fire from the roof and windows of the Casa Tobar and from the advanced barricades, but, seeing the hopelessness of continued resistance to the overwhelming numbers opposed to him, Jack withdrew his forces again, and sent word to the men stationed at the mines to light their matches in readiness for firing the trains. With exultant shouts the enemy, for the most part Poles and voltigeurs, swarmed into the houses. Jack gave the word first at Vallejo. The fougasse exploded with a terrific crash. It was this explosion which had interrupted Tio Jorge's conversation in the café. But though not a Frenchman was left alive in the house, the places of the dead were instantly filled by their furious comrades, who were only kept from rushing across the street towards the Casa Alvarez by the concentrated fire of the Spaniards there posted.
A few minutes later the French in Tobar and Vega met with a like fate. Jack had exploded in each case one of the arms of his Y-shaped mines, and for the time both houses were cleared of the enemy.