Poor Blacier, who had been shot through the lungs at the moment he entered the court, hurled his sabre among the enemy and crawled away into a corner, where he smoked composedly as he bled to death,—or at least appeared to smoke. The Gascon major of the 105th was encountered by Alfonso de Castronuno, who at the second blow laid him dead at his feet, but almost at the same moment the Spaniard himself expired: a shot had passed through his heart. Remembering Louis Lisle, and animated by a bitter hatred against all who wore the same garb, the duke, with his cloak rolled round his left arm and accoutred with sword and dagger, leaped among the Highlanders, calling on the French to follow; but no man obeyed. He would have been instantly bayoneted but for Ronald, who was the first man he encountered, and who ordered the soldiers to leave them hand to hand. In avoiding the duke’s stiletto, Stuart stumbled over the corse of Castronuno, and would have been instantly dispatched, but for the crossed bayonets of a dozen soldiers. "Save him!" cried Stuart. "Macpherson! Evan Bean! take him alive." "Haud!" cried Iverach sternly. "Stand, ye black son o’ the devil! Back—back; or my bayonet’s through ye in a twinkling." But the furious Spaniard spat upon him in the bitterness of his fury, and the next moment his blood was reeking on Evan’s weapon. He fell prone to the earth, and even while he lay choking in blood he continued to curse and spit at the conquerors, until the Spaniards destroyed him by trampling him to death. The moment he fell the French surrendered, after being hemmed into a corner, and finding it impossible to maintain the conflict longer. On both sides the slaughter was very great, and upwards of two hundred lay killed in the court or barbican. The chasseurs on the top of the keep did not yield, until threatened that the place would be blown up; on which they laid down their arms, and joined the other prisoners, who formed a sullen band, ranked in a corner and guarded by the Spaniards, for whom they showed their scorn and contempt so openly, that three or four were killed. Many of the captives were mere boys, poor conscripts, who only a month before had been compelled to resign the shovel for the musquet; and some were the old and high-spirited soldiers of the Emperor,—stern fellows, with bronzed and scarred cheeks, rough moustaches, and mouths black with the cartridges they had bitten. They looked around them with an air of haughty pride, defiance, and nonchalance, which only a Frenchman can assume under such circumstances. When daylight dawned, Blacier was found lying dead. When last seen alive, he was sitting philosophically watching the pool formed by his blood; and thus he expired with his pipe in his mouth, an inveterate smoker to the last.