"Owen, Owen, my boy!" shouted my grandfather, rushing to the front of the gallery, and leaning over, as the swords crossed--"stop, for God's sake. You mustn't fight that swashbuckler! They say he hath been fencer to the Sophy," roared the Major, in the words of Sir Toby Belch. The combatants just turned their heads for a moment to look at the interrupter, and again crossed swords. Immediately on finding his remonstrance disregarded, the Major descended personally into the arena--not by the ordinary route of the stairs, but the shorter one of a perpendicular drop from the gallery, not effected with the lightness of a feathered Mercury. But the clatter of his descent was lost in the concussion of a discharge of artillery that shook the walls. Instantly the air was alive with shot and hissing shells; and before the echoes of the first discharge had ceased, the successive explosion of the shells in the air, and the crashing of chimneys, shattered doors, and falling masonry, increased the uproar. One shell burst in the court, filling it with smoke. My grandfather felt, for a minute, rather dizzy with the shock. When the smoke cleared, by which time he had partially recovered himself, the first object that caught his eye was Von Dessel lying on the pavement, and the doctor stooping over him. The only other person hurt was Rushton, a great piece of the skin of whose forehead, detached by a splinter, was hanging over his right eye. Von Dessel had sustained a compound fracture of the thigh, while the loss of two fingers from his right hand had spoiled his thrust in tierce for ever. "What can be the matter?" said my grandfather, looking upward, as a second flight of missiles hurtled overhead. "Matter enough," quoth Rushton, mopping the blood from his eye with his handkerchief; "those cursed devils of Spaniards are bombarding the town." The Major went up to Owen, and squeezed his hand. "We won't abuse the Spaniards for all that," said he--"they've saved your life, my boy." CHAPTER IV. Enraged at seeing their blockade evaded by the arrival of Darby's fleet, the Spaniards revenged themselves by directing such a fire upon Gibraltar, from their batteries in the Neutral Ground, as in a short time reduced the town to a mass of ruins. This misfortune was rendered the more intolerable to the besieged, as it came in the moment of exultation and general thanksgiving. While words of congratulation were passing from mouth to mouth, the blow descended, and "turned to groans their roundelay."