Springing to his feet, Jack drew his sword in the nick of time to meet the attack of the second pursuer. It was sword against bayonet, and if the latter had been in the hands of a British soldier, Jack, in spite of his skill as a swordsman, might have stood a poor chance. But the bayonet, as wielded by a Continental soldier, was not the same formidable weapon, and it happened that his attacker was a Pole—one of Colonel Chlopiski’s Vistula regiment, which, as Jack had already learnt, had proved the most troublesome of all the French troops since the capture of Santa Engracia. Jack had more than once shown himself to be a swordsman of exceptional resource, and at this critical moment the old French émigré who had been his fencing master in London, if he could have seen the duel, would have beamed with satisfaction. After a few passes Jack gave the Pole an opportunity to lunge; he eagerly seized it; his thrust was lightly parried, and the next moment Jack was in beneath his guard. As he hurried away, even in that breathless moment Jack could not help feeling some pity for his two gallant foemen who would see the Vistula no more. It was in the hope of freeing their country from the bondage of Russia that the Poles had allied themselves with Napoleon. They were now purchasing their own freedom by assisting to enslave others. Hastening across the ruins adjoining the Casa Vega, Jack saw terrible signs of the havoc wrought by his mine. The attacking French force had been a large one. It had perished to a man. But there was no time for anything but escape from the horde of French now rapidly approaching him. Scrambling over charred beams, shattered brickwork, fragments of household furniture, and the dead bodies of the fallen enemy, he drew near to the spot where the explosion of the French mine had blown a large hole in the party-wall. It was here that Jack expected to find the gap through which his men had preceded him into safety. But there was no gap. The hole was completely closed up, and the obstruction was too strong to be won through, too high to clamber over. Nonplussed for the moment, Jack turned to look for another means of escape, aware, as he did so, of loud voices in altercation on the other side of the barricade.