But from the way that he said it, he hardly seemed to mean what he said.
Just then came a tremendous and long continued gust of cheering from the defenders of the castle, which meant that they had cleared their front of the assailants. The sound of General Smith's voice waxed gradually fainter, as if he were being carried away against his will by the tide of retreat. Still at intervals he could be heard, encouraging, reproving, exhorting, but without the same glad confident ring in his tones.
Flags of red and white were waved from the ramparts; pistols (charged with powder only) were fired from embrasures, and the Smoutchies rent their throats in arrogant jubilation. They thought that the great assault had failed.
But behind them in the turret, all unbeknown, the Bounding Brothers silently patted one another with their knuckles as if desirous of practising affectionate greetings for the Smoutchies.
Perhaps they were; and then, again, perhaps they weren't.
"Now's our time," cried Billy Blythe; "come on, boys. Now for it!"
And with both hands and feet he began to remove certain flag-stones and recently heaped up débris from the mouth of a narrow passage, the same by which Hugh John had made his escape. His men stood around in astonishment and slowly dawning admiration, as they realised that their attack was to be a surprise, the most complete and famous in history, and also one strictly devised and carried out on the best models. Though the rank and file did not know quite so much about that as their Commander-in-Chief, who was sure in his heart that Froissart would have been glad to write about his crowning mercy.
It is one of the proofs of the genuine nobility of Hugh John's nature, and also of his consummate generalship, that he put the carrying out of the final coup of his great scheme into other hands, consenting himself to take the hard knocks, to be mauled and defeated, in order that the rout of the enemy might be the more complete.