behind, and one of them, with his heavy flintlock, struck out of Jack’s hand the sword he had drawn, dropping his weapon immediately with a yell as he felt the boy’s knife in his leg. Jack saw that the old Spaniard had taken down one of two rapiers that hung on the wall beneath the portrait of an ancient caballero. Exerting all his strength, he dragged the table round so that it stood obliquely across the room, cutting off a triangular corner. Then he seized the second rapier, and stood side by side with the Spaniard, behind the table, facing their foes just as several of them were preparing to leap across it. Among them Jack now recognized Miguel Priego, his face lit up with savage excitement, flourishing his sword and goading on his desperadoes. The boy had crawled beneath the table, prepared to use his terrible knife on all who came within reach. The one-eyed man had recovered from the blow dealt him by Jack, and had snatched a musket from one of his fellows. Fortunately none of the firearms were loaded, and the Spaniards, mad with rage, grudged the delay necessary to charge their cumbrous weapons. "I think, Miguel, you had better call off your followers," said Jack, in a momentary lull that preceded the rush. There was no reply; in point of fact Jack scarcely expected one. Miguel was at the moment out of sight behind a burly mountaineer, and Jack felt rather by instinct than by any reasoned process of thought that the Spaniard would scarcely let slip this opportunity of taking him at a disadvantage. Behind the table Jack measured the forces opposed to him. Six men were gathering themselves for the onslaught—lean, half-starved wretches for the most part, but ugly customers in the bulk. A raw-boned mountaineer, armed with a long musket and a rusty bayonet, was the most formidable among the gang, and Jack marked him out for special attention when the critical moment came. It was not long in coming. At the cry from Miguel: "Down with the English dog!" the six made a simultaneous rush, and if they had not impeded one another’s movements they must have made short work of the little garrison. The lanky Asturian lunged viciously at Jack, who dodged the point by a hair’s-breadth, narrowly escaping, as he did so, the clubbed musket of another Spaniard on the right. Before the mountaineer could recover, Jack’s long rapier, stretching far across the table, had ploughed a gash in his arm from wrist to elbow, and at the same moment the second assailant, howling with pain, had dropped his musket and fallen to the ground a victim to the terrible knife of the little Spaniard, who had been forgotten by the enemy in the excitement of the fight.