At half-past three in the afternoon the French cannonade suddenly ceased. Jack had placed his men in position, but as he saw that nearly a thousand men were being launched against scarcely more than two hundred, he felt that even the desperate valour of his patriotic troops could not prevail against such odds. But it never occurred to him, or to a single member of his gallant force, that there was any alternative to the one simple course—to hold on to the end. Palafox had entrusted him with the defence of that quarter; he would defend it to the last gasp, and he knew that no British officer in the same situation would have come to any other conclusion. The attack had begun. In the two streets the French were rushing ten abreast at the barricades. In the ruins approaching Vega and Vallejo their formation was necessarily broken, but they swept forward with a dash and a courage which Jack, remembering their former failures, could not but regard as magnificent. The front ranks seemed to melt away under the fire of the defenders, who, well disciplined by their long experience, fired calmly and with deadly accuracy, wasting no powder, and watching the French advance in seeming unconcern. But though the enemy fell by scores, there was no halting now. They swarmed up to and through the breached barricades, and ran a race with death towards the grim skeletons of the shattered houses. For a few seconds there was a tense silence; the majority of the defenders had discharged their pieces and were either reloading or preparing to repel with the bayonet. Then the opposing forces met; there was a sudden babel of noise, steel clashing against steel, pistols cracking, men shouting fiercely in their several tongues, and some crying out in the agony of death. The street was narrow; for a time the French could make but little impression on the unbroken front opposed to them, but Jack, from his post on the roof of Hontanon, saw that it was now a question of the most desperate close fighting. As soon as the head of the attacking column was lost to view beneath him, he hurried down to take his part in the tremendous struggle.