"Doubt not!" cried the Maid; "the place is ours!" But even Dunois held that "there was no hope of victory this day." He gave orders to sound the recall and withdraw the troops across the river. The day was lost? Not so! "But then," he says, "the Maid came to me, and asked me to wait yet a little while. Then she mounted her horse, and went alone into the vineyard, some way from the throng of men, and in that vineyard she abode in prayer for about a quarter of an hour. Then she came back, and straightway took her standard into her hands and planted it on the edge of the fosse." Seeing her once more in her place, steel and iron having apparently no power upon her, the English "shuddered, and fear fell upon them." They too, remember, had had their prophecies. "A virgin would mount on the backs of their archers!" A month, a week ago, they had still laughed at this. Now the "mysterious consolation" which seemed to radiate from the person of the Maid on all faithful Frenchmen, heartening and uplifting them, became for her adversaries a mysterious terror, striking cold on the stoutest heart. The French had already sounded the retreat; the banner of the Maid, borne all day long by her faithful standard-bearer, d'Aulon, had already been handed by him to a comrade for the withdrawal; when at Joan's earnest prayer the recall was countermanded. D'Aulon said to his friend, a Basque whom he knew well, "If I dismount and go forward to the foot of the wall, will you follow me?" He sprang from his saddle, held up his shield against the shower of arrows, and leaped into the ditch, supposing that the Basque was following him. The Maid at this moment saw her standard in the hands of the Basque, who also had gone down into the ditch. She seems not to have recognized his purpose. She thought that her standard was lost, or was being betrayed, and seized the end of the floating flag. "Ha! my standard! my standard!" she cried, and she so shook the flag that it waved wildly like a signal for instant onset. The men-at-arms conceived it to be such a signal, and gathered for attack. "Ha! Basque, is this what you promised me?" cried d'Aulon. Thereon the Basque tore the flag from the hands of the Maid, ran through the ditch, and stood beside d'Aulon, close to the enemy's wall. By this time the whole company of those who loved her had rallied and were round her. "Watch!" said Joan to a knight at her side, "Watch till the tail of my standard touches the wall!" A few moments passed. "Joan, the flag touches the wall!" "Then enter, all is yours!"[41] Then, like a wave of the sea, the French flung themselves upon the ladders; scaled the wall, mounted the crest, leaped or fell down on the inside; cut, thrust, hacked, all with such irresistible fury that the English, after valiant resistance, finally turned and fled to the drawbridge that crossed to the Tourelles. Ah! The bridge was in flames! Smoke rolled over it, tongues of flame shot out red between the planks.