By his glass, earlier in the evening, he had observed the approach of artillery, and some other signs which convinced him of the necessity of Don Joseph's precaution. For his own part, he never retired under cover the whole night, but kept his station on the best point of observation,—a tower at the extremity of the outworks.
About the watch of the night, which is called by the Moors, Latumar, being their fifth hour of prayer, the sky was involved in total darkness; but the attentive ear of Louis heard a distant murmuring. It was demonstrative of the approach he expected; and having persons near him for the purpose, he dispatched them to the lines to order every one to be prepared.
In less than a quarter of an hour after he had taken his own most efficient station, the flash of cannon and of musquetry lit the plain for a moment, like the splendour of day; and, in the next, the roaring of the guns, and the smoke of the explosion, rocked the fortress to its foundation, and involved the whole atmosphere in sulphureous clouds. The ordnance on the walls of Ceuta were not silent; and the mutual bombardment in the intermitting darkness, was rendered more terrific by the savage cries of the besiegers mingling their horrid war-whoop with the hissing of the musquetry, and the tremendous thunders of the cannonade.
Where his father was in the midst of this dreadful contest, more than once shot in direful question across the mind of Louis; but he dismissed the paralyzing thought. He was there to defend the cause of his country and the faith of his fathers; and he must not allow the yearnings of his heart to unman his fidelity.
He flew from the bastion on which he stood, at the moment he heard a cry of triumph from the scene below. In defiance of shells and raking fires, these desperate barbarians had rushed on, and pointed their guns till a breach was made. Louis ordered a rampart to be immediately raised on the ruins, but the gabions were hardly rolled forward, and the cannon planted, when a tumbrel blew up, and rendered the egress wider and more accessible than before. The stone battlements shook under his feet like an earthquake, while the fragments from the torn rampart, the smoke, and the scorching powder, covered him with viewless horror. There was not the pause of a moment between the explosion, the dispersion of the smoke, and the most dreadful conflict of the day.
Aben Humeya had prepared for an escalade; and the very band which planted the crescent on the towers of Larach, was the first who scaled the walls of Ceuta. The contest at the breach was as sanguinary as it was decisive. The Moors were twice repulsed with terrible slaughter; and the more terrible the second time, as it was quickly known, by the intrepid desperation of the assailants, that they were led on by the Basha himself. Louis's unreceding arm had tumbled the leader of the first division from his footing on the wall; and at his fall his followers had given ground. On the second assault, he was contending with the invincible devotedness of a man who knew that spot was the key of the fortress, when his father's voice assailed his ear. A flash of musketry shewed the jewelled chelengk in his turban, as he mounted the farther ridge of the platform, slippery with blood, and called on his men to support him. In another moment, two Biscayan grenadiers held the Basha between their weapons and the pinnacle of the battlement. A choice of death seemed the only alternative,—their swords, or precipitation over the precipice. The Moors who pressed forward, were cut to pieces by the Spaniards on the breach; and Louis saw nothing but destruction to his father, when rushing towards the spot, in the moment Ripperda's weapon shivered against those of his enemies, he threw himself, sword in hand, between the Biscayans and their prey, franticly exclaiming:
"The Basha is the governor's prisoner." But the strokes which were levelled at Ripperda's breast were sheathed in his son's. Before the Spaniards could check their arms, he was cut through the shoulder and stabbed in his side; but the men recoiled on finding they had wounded their leader; and in the instant, Sidi Ali mounting the height with a fresh horde of triumphant Moors, they surrounded Aben Humeya, believing the day won. But as Ali's hand planted the Ottoman standard amidst the still grappling of foe to foe, and the anathemas of the Christian against the ferocious curses of the Moor, the clouds of smoke rolled away from the eastern point of the rampart, and the golden head of the sun peered from the horizon. Its first ray shot direct upon the radiant crest of Aben Humeya, and a rifle took aim. The ball struck; and, in spite of a momentary exertion in its victim to spring forward, he staggered and fell into the arms of his followers.
A woeful yell announced to the legions below, that some direful disaster had happened. The cry was echoed from rank to rank with shrieks and howlings; and a single blast of a trumpet immediately succeeded. The breach was abandoned, as if by enchantment. The firing sunk at once into a dead calm; and the flight of the Moors through the yet hovering smoke, sounded in the darkness like the wings of many birds brushing the sands before the sweep of some coming storm.