They were panic-struck, and fought fiercely with each other for the gaps in the fence which would admit them to the shelter of the quinta. Asneiros, calling two subalterns to aid him, seized the largest of these gaps, and the three with their swords kept back a number of the fugitives.
Meantime Marcelino had sprung to his feet, half dazed but unwounded; the English were close upon him, for a moment he stared wildly round him, then Evaristo galloped up to him.
"Mount behind me, Marcelino," he shouted, shaking his left foot from the stirrup.
The next minute the pony with a double load was galloping away for the quinta, where Evaristo sprang to the ground and Marcelino, galloping after the fugitives, succeeded in rallying some threescore men, whom he led back to the fence and joined to those whom Asneiros had stopped and had already drawn up under shelter of the aloe hedge. The English had halted, and were apparently about to renew their attack upon General Liniers, when the negroes opened fire upon them from the hedge. With a loud cheer 800 red and green coated soldiery rushed upon the frail barrier which hid the remnant of the "Morenos de Ponce," burst a way for themselves through it, or ran in by the undefended gaps. There was a minute of wild confusion, the negroes firing at random upon an enemy who outnumbered them five to one, and who attacked them from all sides. Marcelino, now on foot, and his officers tried to draw them away from the hedge, and to fall back upon some outhouses in the rear of the quinta, but the movements of the English were too rapid, the retreat soon changed into headlong flight; about forty of the negroes, being cut off and surrounded, threw down their arms and were made prisoners. At the far side of the quinta, Marcelino made another attempt to rally his men, but was at once charged by a party of the enemy.
"Surrender!" shouted the officer who led them.
Marcelino had lost his sword when his horse was killed under him, he stooped and seized the musket of a negro who had fallen at his feet mortally wounded, and beating aside the bayonets of those nearest to him, tried to force his way through them; the next moment he was beaten down by the butt-ends of their muskets and trampled under their feet as they rushed on in pursuit.
When Marcelino had rallied his men in the quinta, he had called his brother to him, and telling him to remount his pony, had given him into the care of his servant Manuel, telling the latter to go off with him at once straight for the city. The negro took the pony by the bridle and led him away, but on reaching the cross-road behind the quinta by an open gateway, Evaristo refused to go any farther, and drawing tight his rein sat there in the saddle watching the last struggle of the "Morenos de Ponce."
"Vamos!" said Manuel, as the fugitive negroes came running past them.
"No! no!" said Evaristo, still tightly holding his pony by the head. "Oh! my brother, even yet I can save you!" he cried, as he saw Marcelino's last desperate effort, then twitching the rein from Manuel's hand, he urged his pony back through the gateway, and was close to his brother when he fell, trampled to the earth under the feet of the furious soldiery. But Manuel on foot had kept pace with him, and now springing up behind him wrenched the reins from him, and holding him fast in his arms, turned the pony's head and galloped off, and neither spoke nor slacked his pace until he had reached the house of Don Gregorio Lopez, where he set the boy down, half dead with sorrow and excitement, and went back himself in search of his master, whom he had small hope of ever seeing again alive.
The "Morenos de Ponce" were utterly routed and dispersed; Marcelino had sacrificed himself and his men, but he had saved the army of General Liniers from destruction. A deadly fire from the Corrales de la Miserere had checked the advance of the main body of the army, the charge of the British infantry had driven it back in hopeless confusion into the roads by which it had debouched upon the Plaza; had the flank movement of the two regiments under General Crauford been uninterrupted, the retreat of the greater part of the army would have been cut off. As it was, General Liniers lost eleven guns, and was driven from amongst the quintas into the open camp, far away to the left of the road by which he had advanced. Night closed in and prevented further pursuit by the victorious enemy. Almost broken-hearted by the misfortune which had befallen him, and desperate at the ruin of all his high hopes, the Reconquistador threw himself upon the ground and for hours spoke to no one. About 1000 men lay round him in every attitude of exhaustion and despair; of the rest of his army he knew nothing, it was dispersed in all directions.