A minute or two later this became evident, for the crash of firing grew furious on the roofs above the gap, and Appleby, who thrust his glasses into their case, was shouting hoarsely. Rising by twos and threes the men sprang out from among the flowering shrubs, and Tony saw the low walls and clumps of aloes become alive with scurrying forms. They seemed to move independently and without formation, though Appleby, with hand swung up, was shouting in Castilian, and Maccario went by pointing with a Spanish infantry officer’s sword. The gleam of it in the intense sunlight dazzled Tony’s eyes, and he stood still, uncertain what was going on, and gasping with excitement, when Appleby’s hand fell on his shoulder. “I can’t tell you to hold off now we’re going in,” he said. “Still, it’s devilishly risky. You’ll not be unnecessarily rash, Tony.” He sprang forward with three or four more at his heels, and Tony found himself running a few yards behind him. He could see that the Sin Verguenza were following, but save that they ran with wide spaces between them they seemed to keep no order, and to have only one purpose, to cross the perilous bare space as rapidly as they could. The time that cost them appeared interminable, but it became evident that a few at least of those who had gained an entry into the town were firing on the cazadores who held the mouth of the carretera, and in another minute or two they swept up to it and stopped again, gasping in the smoke, with high white walls above them, and a mound of soil and torn‐up pavement meshed with wires close in front of them. Tony remembered he had heard that in these days of magazine rifles and hopper‐fed guns an attack of the kind was foredoomed to fail, but it seemed that the Sin Verguenza meant to try it, for already Maccario was half‐way up the slope, with Appleby, pistol in hand, close behind him, and while a savage cry went up a wave of scrambling men seemed to toss together and roll on. It swept up to the crest of the barrier, and plunged into the smoke, and the cazadores wavered, turned, and fled. They were outnumbered, and, as it transpired later, had been galled by a fire from the roofs above, while Appleby eventually discovered a cartridge partly torn to pieces stuck immovably in the chamber of their quick‐firing gun.