Seeing that the girl could not be won away from her idea of her duty, both to the dead and to her country, her mother at last gave up trying to dissuade her, and made her go to bed and try to sleep, so as to have strength for the coming day.
But although Augustina lay quite still with closed eyes, she did not sleep. All through the hours she went over her childhood, and always, in everything, was Felipe. Each little pleasure which they had enjoyed together came vividly to her mind,—how they had studied and worked and played; and now—Even the very bobbins on her lace pillow were the work of his skilful fingers, and many of the comforts of their little home had been made or bought by him for her mother or herself.
She could not bear to think of him lying on the rough stones of the wall, but the Captain had promised that the boy soldier should be laid to rest within the convent yard.
“Would that we could do as much for each brave man who gives his life for his country!” the message ran.
The grey dawn had hardly broken before Augustina had crept from her bed and down the stairs, and was hurrying towards her cannon and place on the walls. She was trying to forget her unhappy thoughts in the work which lay before her. The soldier who had taken her place was in worse condition than he had been the evening before, since the chill of the night and the strain of the work were far more than he, with wounds hardly healed, could stand.
“I am shamed to give the place to you,” he said; “yet if I stay longer, I fear that I shall be of no use at all. I will report to the Captain and see that some one is sent here.”
“It will be no use. I shall serve this gun to-day and every day, as long as God wills, or till we conquer. I promised Felipe, and the Captain said it should be so.”
Augustina turned away as if further argument was useless, and so it proved. Each day she took her place beside the gun where Felipe had met his death, and not only worked it with the skill and courage of a man, but inspired others, less stout of heart than she, to hold their places too. Indeed on more than one occasion she held the men in position by her words and her bravery, though, alas! poor Zaragoza had to yield at last to a power stronger than her own.
After sixty days of incredible bravery, after countless repulses and endless suffering, they were overcome. Right beside the great convent of Santa Engracia, near which was the cannon which was Augustina’s charge, the enemy made a breach in the walls. The French soldiers who worked at it were partially protected by the convent, and had wrought the mischief before the Spaniards were fully aware of what had happened. Augustina heard the noise of crumbling masonry at a distance, and ran along the wall in the direction of the sound.
“Ah!” She caught her breath, for there, even as she looked, a score of the hated French were through. On they came, silent at first, leaping through the hole which the workers every moment made larger. They rushed in like a stream swollen by the spring rains, till ten thousand men at least had flowed into the city.