Had Vytal lost? It seemed to him impossible. He had never known the word save once, in youth, when a rigid cordon of steel like this had encircled him in the streets of Paris. The memory of that massacre, in which his parents had been murdered by Catholics, like these, redoubled his fury. He flung himself against the line of bristling swords that, impassable as a vast _cheval-de-frise_, checked him at every quarter. The knowledge that he held another life in trust—a detestable life—nevertheless, must he not preserve it?—quickened his every fibre for a new attempt. But above and beneath all a woman’s name seemed to reverberate through his whole being like the war-cry of a soul. He thrust, thrust, and thrust again. The swords met, slithered, and the Spanish officer fell groaning on the rampart of dead. The enemy’s line gave way. The English started forward. But St. Magil, nursing his wounded arm in the rear, met the emergency with a new tactic. Hoarsely he bade a dozen men to stand upon the bulwark, each with a torch in hand. The manœuvre favored him. The English fell back apace. A line of wavering light blinded their eyes. The firebrands’ dazzling glare rendered their thrusts and parries far wilder and more uncertain than before. Vytal’s face, illuminated vividly by the maddening light, grew doubly tense and desperate. Wounded in the left arm by the slash of a cutlass, his corselet dented in many places, his eyes haggard and lips white, his grizzled brow and close-cut beard clotted with sweat and blood, he nevertheless stood there still, a grim, unconquerable Death. He fell to his knee, and fought so; then, staggering, rose again and towered indomitable. Still the word “lose” had no meaning for him save when applied to an enemy. And even now, on the very verge of defeat, his rage and iron will thus applied it in the turmoil of his depths to St. Magil. Dyonis Harvie fell beside him wounded in the throat. Vytal turned to a musketeer who had stepped forward in the opening. “Mark the torch-bearers!” and then, louder—“The torch-bearers!” A few shots rang out with new purpose amid the havoc, and three Spaniards lurched backward from the bulwark, flinging toward the English with a last derision the sputtering cressets as they fell. St. Magil turned to the men nearest him. “Replace them!” And three soldiers, leaping to the bulwark, reinforced the lurid line of flambeaus which had worked so much disaster. The ammunition of the English marksmen had given out. Vytal noted the silence. “Your cutlasses! Stand close to me! We are Englishmen.… There!… Good!… Hold fast!… Death is not defeat, surrender is!… We … win … dying!” His words took the place of bullets, his voice of the steel blades which were now but streaks of crimson on the deck. “_Dying!_”