I expressed my gratitude as fully as I could, but objected to the proposal of tying a dead man's hands. No doubt, indeed, could remain of his being no longer in a state to endanger any one; for having no helmet on at the time he entered, the very first blow of the musketoon must have nearly stunned him, and several of the after ones had driven in his skull in various places. It is probable, that, having been kept in confinement by the order of the viceroy, he had been liberated at the moment the danger became pressing, and that, instead of presenting himself where he might do his duty, his first care had been to seek the means of gratifying his revenge, no doubt attributing to me the punishment he had received. Such an event as my death, in the confusion and danger of the circumstances, he most probably imagined, would pass unnoticed; and no one, at all events, could prove that it had been committed by his hands. Whether his comrade, who had been placed as sentinel at the door where we were confined, had been removed for the more active defence of the place, or whether he had connived at the entrance of the assassin, I know not; but at all events, if he was there, he must have been an accomplice, and consequently would not have betrayed his fellow. Such, however, was a strange fate for a daring and ferocious man--to fall by the hands of one of the meekest cowards that ever crept quietly through existence! and yet I have often remarked that bad actions, the most boldly undertaken, and the best designed, often--nay, most frequently--fall back upon the head of their projectors, repelled from their intended course by something petty, unexpected, or despised. CHAPTER XXV. While this was taking place within, the tumult without had increased a thousand-fold; and the din of cries, and screams, and blows, and groans, mingled in one wild shriek of human passion, hellish, as if they rose from Phlegethon. But to my surprise, the roar of the cannon no longer drowned the rest, and looking again from the window, I saw all the outward defences in the hands of the populace. The fortifications of the arsenal had only been completed, so far as regarded the mere external works; but even had they been as perfect as human ingenuity could have devised, the small number of soldiers which were now within the gates would never have sufficed to defend so great a space from a multitude like that of the insurgents. At the moment that I returned to my loophole, the peasantry were pouring on every side into the inner court; and the Viceroy, with not more than a hundred Castilians, was endeavouring in vain to repel them. If ever what are commonly called prodigies of valour were really wrought, that unhappy nobleman certainly did perform them, fighting in the very front, and making good even the open court of the arsenal against the immense body of populace which attacked it, for nearly a quarter of an hour.