The clouds rose, and the day opened glad, if not inspiring. Hidetada bestirred himself with the first lifting of night, and as the gray fogs banked over against the gorged-out mountains, with here and there a village or a temple hung defiantly or standing gracefully upon some jutting point or sloping greensward, those more sympathetic, if rawer, recruits, from the Tokugawa domain, took up the forward advance, and refacing the broken fragments of Maeda’s demolished command now at first made that valley resound with the frenzy of rallying blood-tasted savagery.

Hidetada led them, and like with him the reward of valor had justified the risk. Stringing out his long formation into V shape, his right resting upon the solid Hirano, the left hard upon the seashore, and a solid oblong breaking and forming the V’s middle, they tramped straight ahead, thus in zigzag alignment, toward a solid defense, from river to sea, behind the fortifications at Ozaka.

“They mean to break our walls midway, disregarding altogether the gates, then quarter about and march each half to the opening thus made,” said Yodogima, to Hideyori, her readiest counsellor. “I wonder what means they have to batter down barriers so thick and high—a hundred and twenty feet, I presume, just there.”

“Let them come,” replied the son. “And if they do make the breach, I promise you that I and not they shall be the first to sally through; Harunaga’s guns are trained, and he is going to count their teeth. Depend upon it.”

Sanada lay close, under shelter of the low, temporary embankment: his ranks had been little impaired; Yodogima remained high up in the citadel—Hidetada advanced, to the wall where lay Sanada.

“What kind of hunting do you have out there? You might find it better on this side the wall,” said Sanada, to Hidetada.

Hidetada made no answer, but began hopping his men over—the center first, and then others, as they came up—charging toward the outer main walls, as Yodogima had surmised.

Sanada fell back, coaxing them on.

They had come well within range of Harunaga’s matchlocks, the main body facing them squarely, when suddenly there rang out the unexpected:

“Fire!”