“O’Malley! O’Malley!”
Fierce and terrible beyond all power of words to express was the hardly human cry.
With a couple of bounds I had reached our foes. The glimmer of a sword passed by me, and I parried the point of a spear thrust at my breast. Then I felt my knees gripped, and I tripped over upon the body of the man who held me. As I stumbled, my weapon falling from my hand, I caught a glimpse of de Vilela standing over me, his long sword playing like lightning, holding the enemy in check.
There was a rush of feet, and across me and the man beneath me, as across a wall, did the battle rage.
I had fallen with my whole weight upon the man who had seized my legs, and I heard him gasp and sob and try for breath as he lay underneath.
As I felt along his form for his throat, I noticed that he wore no armour, and my fingers became as steel when I realised that this was no other, could be no other, than the traitor who had opened the gate. Whoever or whatever he was, his secret died with him there, for I did not relax my grasp upon his neck until I was well assured that I had twisted and broken it.
And when in the morning we found the body amongst a heap of slain, it was trampled out of all semblance of human shape, but not so as not to show the sign of the broken neck.
How I managed to roll myself out of that press and coil I cannot tell, but yet somehow I did it, and all the while I was strangely conscious that de Vilela’s sword watched and warded over me, so that I escaped with my life. This affair of mine took not so long in the doing as in the telling of it, and when I had struggled to my feet he was in front of me—”Santiago! Santiago!” on his lips, as that long sword of his sang its songs of death. Plucking my battle-axe from my girdle I stepped to his side.
And now about us were my mistress and her fiery swordsmen, mad with rage and thirsting for blood. With wild screams we fell upon and fought back the Englishmen, who stubbornly contested every foot of ground, until we hurled them broken across the bridge, pursuing them for some distance beyond the castle. Then, facing round, we attacked from the rear those who had attempted to enter by scaling the walls; and perhaps some escaped in the darkness, but of those who were seen by us not one was spared.