Ping, ping, came a few reports, but evidently out of range. Each smoke-wreath was in a different direction.
"This may get hot," I said to myself; "the Carlists may not be sharpshooters, but this clump of uniforms in relief on the grass must present a blur that will be an enticing target for them. I dare not go back to the wall, but it might be discreet to lie down. There is no disgrace in offering them a small elevation of corpus." I stretched myself on the sward, acted nonchalance, and lit a cigar.
The volunteers could no longer be held in control. They opened action on their own account, one fellow distinguishing himself by the rapidity of his fire, and the intensity with which he aimed at something—or nothing.
"Ah, that's Tomas!" said a portly civilian connoisseur, with his hands in his pockets. "We know him, he is making music; he wants to get himself remarked."
The soldiers did not deliver a shot, but the volunteers kept cracking away, and the invisible Carlists replied. Nobody was hit, though bullets could be heard whizzing overhead for twenty minutes, and one did actually knock a chip off a wall. That was the sole damage done to the Republican position; the damage to the Carlist must have been less. Two of the Miqueletes ventured stealthily down a road leading towards the point from which the nearest jets of smoke curled, following the ditch by the side, stooping and peering through the bushes. There was a volley from afar. They hesitated and stood, as if undecided whether to advance.
"Sound the retire for those men," said the captain; and as the call rang out they returned.
That volley was the last sign the Carlists gave; and after waiting ten minutes, the captain shut up my glass, returned it to me, and remarked that the attack was a feint, and had no object beyond worrying his men. He gave the order "March," the gate was opened, Barbarossa rejoined me, and we returned to Irun, taking care to keep as near the regulars as we could. "Nada—nothing," cried the captain to an inquiring lady on a balcony, and the town-gates were closed after the volunteers had returned and tramped to the Plaza with the proud bearing of citizens who had done their duty.
How that heroic Tomas did strut! A fighter he of the choicest brand, one not to stop at trifles; there was martial ire in his flaming glance; defiance breathed from his nostrils; triumph sat on his lips; he swung his arms like destructive flails; and as he entered a tavern one could only fancy him calling in a voice of Stentor for a jug of rum and blood plentifully besprinkled with gunpowder and cayenne pepper to assuage the thirst of combat.
O'Donovan gave me his letter. Barbarossa hinted that it was our best course to slope, and slope we did, as soon as the horse was harnessed. As we passed down the street a grinning face saluted me from a doorway. It was that of my acquaintance from the barber's shop. He gave me a meaning wink. The artful Carlists had evidently succeeded in their object, whatever it might have been. On the river-bank our fair and faithful ferry-maid awaited us. We were conveyed over in safety, and at the hotel of Hendaye soon forgot the perils we had encountered.
Barbarossa was dead-beat, and threw himself on a sofa, where he sank back heavy-eyed and exhausted; and I, almost feared that he would drop into a coma, as the penalty of overstraining nature, until the sight of a pack of cards restored him as if by a spell to his normal wakefulness.