Together they left the café. The crash of the explosion had drawn others to the street, and as the two leaders hurried along, past the barricades, up narrow by-ways, pursuing a roundabout course towards the Huerba, they were joined by ones and twos and threes, who came in answer to their hail. At the corner of a lane near the Seminary thirty men who had escaped with Fernando Gonzalez from San Lazaro swelled their numbers. "To the Casa Alvarez!" shouted Tio Jorge. A second explosion made him hasten still more eagerly. "To the Casa Alvarez!" he repeated. "War to the knife!" *CHAPTER XXVIII* *The Last Fight in Saragossa* The Last Muster—The Fougasse—A Forlorn Hope—Spiking the Guns—A Race with Death—A Sally—Solicitude—Jorge Arcos Volunteers—To the Bitter End—A Bolt from the Blue—The Last Sacrifice—The Courage of Despair—Truce At the Casa Alvarez a stern fight was in progress. On the preceding day what Jack had foreseen had at length come to pass: the French had once more brought guns to bear on his position. Warned by their previous experience, they blinded their batteries in such a way that their gunners were protected from the muskets of the Spaniards on the roofs. They cleared a space at the end of the ruined block of which the Casa Vallejo formed a part, and there placed two guns; another was mounted at the end of the street between that house and the Casa Tobar; a fourth at the end of the street in which the Vega barricade was erected. It was clear to Jack that he could not hope to prevent the enemy from gaining a footing in the houses; all that he could do for the present was to await developments, and act as the need of the moment dictated. But, to be prepared for emergencies, he rapidly constructed, beneath the floor of the Casa Vallejo, a fougasse—a shallow mine in the form of a truncated cone, with its axis inclined towards the point of attack. Over this he piled some tons of brickwork and stones which, in the explosion, would be hurled many yards to the front and flanks. With this, and the as yet unexploded Y-shaped mines beneath the Casas Tobar and Vega, he hoped to destroy the French who would rush the houses when the bombardment ceased, and thus to enable his men to retake the positions they must lose.