He had only 200 men now with him, and many of these were on their last legs. But when the rumour spread through the quarter that the French were preparing to make a serious attack, some fifty poor wretches, scarcely able to crawl, staggered from their squalid lodgings, and begged to be allowed to take part in the defence. They were a pitiful sight, gaunt and haggard, with ague-stricken limbs and fever-lit eyes. They were incapable of hand-to-hand fighting; many of them were too weak even to lift their muskets to their shoulders; but they could fire muskets rested on window-sills and through loopholes, and Jack, gladly as he would have spared them, was too hard-pressed to reject any aid, however slight. A score of women came forward, offering to load muskets for the men, and thus save time. Among them Jack recognized the lady he had seen as he came with Tio Jorge to take over his command. He remembered her attitude of frenzied grief; he recalled the fierce command she had laid upon her little boy. The child was no longer with her; the little fellow had died of fever a few days before. The poor creature had now lost father, brothers, husband, and son, and had come with the wild fury of a mad woman to wreak vengeance on the enemy. About ten o’clock in the morning the French opened fire with all their guns upon the Casa Vallejo and the barricades. Jack made what reply he could from the roofs and windows, but the batteries were so well screened that the fire of his men was almost wholly ineffectual. Great gaps were soon made in the wall of the house and in the barricades, and seeing that the attempt to hold the latter in the face of the bombardment would entail a useless loss of life, Jack withdrew his men behind the Casas Vega and Tobar, and held them in readiness to rush into the houses when his mines had exploded. After two hours’ bombardment the four guns ceased fire. Immediately afterwards three parties of French dashed forward in headlong charge. The Spaniards, who, on the cessation of the bombardment, had sped back to their posts, met the enemy with dauntless front. The Frenchmen in the streets fell rapidly under a hot fire from the roof and windows of the Casa Tobar and from the advanced barricades, but, seeing the hopelessness of continued resistance to the overwhelming numbers opposed to him, Jack withdrew his forces again, and sent word to the men stationed at the mines to light their matches in readiness for firing the trains. With exultant shouts the enemy, for the most part Poles and voltigeurs, swarmed into the houses. Jack gave the word first at Vallejo. The fougasse exploded with a terrific crash. It was this explosion which had interrupted Tio Jorge’s conversation in the café. But though not a Frenchman was left alive in the house, the places of the dead were instantly filled by their furious comrades, who were only kept from rushing across the street towards the Casa Alvarez by the concentrated fire of the