The Sword of Gideon

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"Oh! to be there!" Bevill cried. "There behind them, with the old regiment, instead of a helpless man, a waster, here. Yet, no, no! My place is here by you, my heart, my very own, to save and help you even as you have saved me."

But from Sylvia there came no response, or, at least, none in answer to his words. Instead, from the lips of both these women, brave as each was, there came a cry, a gasp that was in actual fact a suppressed shriek. Already against the wall of the Citadel more than one bomb had struck and exploded with an awful crash; they saw falling swiftly before the window huge masses of detached masonry that thundered a moment later on to the stones of the courtyard below; they saw, through the grime and smoke that rolled suddenly away on the breathless, unstirred morning air, that slowly the English infantry was creeping up nearer the great guns in preparation for a rush. For already a breach was made below; it was not only the side of the Citadel that was now being battered by the attackers.

Still, a little later, the mouth of the embrasure was closed by the explosion of a bomb, that, while shattering the window into a million pieces, burst in the stone framework and also dislodged the stones above. Those in the room were therefore in darkness once more, a darkness as profound as that of the night now passed away, and, with an anxious cry, Bevill demanded if either of his companions had been struck by the dislodged masonry.

"Ah! heaven be praised," he cried, finding both were safe. "But now, now, the time has come to leave this. The door is still open; even were it not so, none would keep us confined here at such a moment. Come! Come At least let us make our way below."

Then, hurriedly escorting Sylvia and the Comtesse through the corridors in which--though they passed now and again French soldiers hurrying either up or down the staircase--they met with no molestation, they reached the salle d'armes on the lower floor.

Yet, as they did so, they saw also the terrible devastation that the bombardment had already wrought. One side of a corridor, the outer one formed by the great front of the Citadel, was entirely blown away; a room or large cell that presented the appearance of having been recently occupied--since they saw within it the débris of a shattered pallet and a table--was a mass of ruins; the three remaining sides were open to the morning air. Also, more than once, the women had to raise their dresses to step over wounded men lying in the passages, who had doubtless been shot while themselves firing from the windows.

But still they were in the salle d'armes: here, since it was not quite so exposed to the fire of the besiegers, they might hope to remain in comparative safety.

"Come," Bevill said to his companions. "Come to this corner. At this spot you are farthest removed from the outer wall which is alone likely to be struck. Meanwhile, since one knows not what violence these soldiers may attempt in the bitterness of their defeat, it is as well I should be armed." Saying which he moved towards the trophies of ancient weapons that decorated all the inner side of the great salle, and let his eyes rove over the swords that hung upon the wall.

"This should serve," he said to himself, reaching out his hand towards a great Schiavona or Venetian broadsword; one with a long bi-convex blade that, in the hands of an expert and powerful swordsman, might do terrible execution.

Returning now to where Sylvia and Madame de Valorme were, Bevill seated himself by the former's side while telling both that the Citadel must soon surrender before such an attack as this now being made, and that, doubtless, the Chartreuse must be in the same position. Yet his words fell almost unheard upon their ears, so awful was the din around. From the roof of this old fortress discharge followed discharge unceasingly; from the windows the crack of muskets went on, and still against the walls the artillery balls and the bombs of the besiegers thundered and crashed.