It was as he had feared. As soon as the French swarmed over the Vallejo barricade, the Casa Vallejo and its garrison became completely isolated. At the moment of his arrival a furious fight was proceeding at the inner barricade. The French charge, led by a gigantic Polish officer, had driven the Spaniards behind their last defence and threatened to dislodge them from that. Jack at once summoned twenty men from the reserve stationed at the Casa Alvarez, and with them threw himself into the breach, where, amid fragments of beams, displaced sacks and baskets of earth, and the débris of part of the wall of Vallejo thrown down by the explosion of the fougasse, a stern hand-to-hand fight was being waged. It was almost impossible, in the turmoil and rush, to distinguish friends from foes, but in the centre of the human whirlpool the huge form of the Polish officer was conspicuous. He was wielding a large bar of iron, which he had picked up among the ruins, and even at that moment Jack marvelled at the man’s immense strength. Disdaining the blows aimed at him by men who looked mere pigmies beside him, he was step by step forcing a way through the barricade towards the open space fronting the Casa Alvarez. Jack, with his reinforcements, had arrived not a moment too soon. As he pushed through towards the spot where the deadly iron, wielded with as much ease as though it had been a malacca cane, rose and fell with fatal regularity, the onward rush of the French was stayed for a moment. Another second would have brought the two leaders together; but Jack was not yet to cross weapons with the Pole. At the very instant when they came within striking distance there was a terrible crash; Pole and Englishman started instinctively. A huge mass of masonry had fallen from Vallejo upon the outer barricade, into the midst of the crowded ranks of the Frenchmen, of whom a score at least were buried beneath the ruins. Even above the clash of weapons, the shouts of the combatants, and the groans of the wounded, a shrill mocking voice could be heard exulting in the deadly effect of the avalanche, and raining frantic curses upon the French. In the moment of surprise the enemy gave way. Glancing up, Jack saw the figure of the madwoman, the demented Doña Mercedes Ortega, giddily poised upon a jagged corner of masonry that threatened every instant to follow the rest into the street below. The poor creature had seen from the Casa Alvarez that the outer wall of Vallejo had been so breached that a push would precipitate it into the street upon the barricade. Escaping from Juanita’s detaining hand, as Jack afterwards learnt, she had crept from the roof of the Casa Hontanon on to the wall of Vallejo; had leapt from point to point of the uneven summit, reached the corner overlooking the street, and with the strength of frenzy had pushed the masonry down, working more havoc among the enemy than had been wrought by many an elaborately-prepared mine.