After a lighted carcase, composed of the direst combustibles, and of giant size, had been flung blazing from the walls by the French, compelling the assault to be anticipated by half-an-hour, when the stormers neared the great breach, José and his comrade, Diaz of Belem, advanced with the rest of the Cazadores. When Diaz was in the act of taking some brandy from his canteen, a sixteen-pound shot took off his head. Yet, bugle in hand, José kept on, resolved to put in practice the scheme he had formed, and with which he had acquainted his colonel, the Viscount de Sa, and his captain, De Lobiera. As leaves are swept before a tempest, the stormers came sweeping up the rough _débris_ of the breach covered with dead and wounded men, encumbered by these at every step, shells bursting, shot and grenades falling among them. Their shouts were terrible; the yells of the French more terrible still! Up, up they went, till they found the perilous gap was crossed by a glittering, dreadful, and impassable _chevaux-de-frise_, composed of sword-blades, keenly edged and sharply pointed, fixed in ponderous beams, chained together, and strongly wedged in the shot-riven ruins. Beyond it were masses of the French pouring in their deadly fire, sweeping the gap with sheets of lead as the wind sweeps a tunnel. Under the _chevaux-de-frise_ the gallant José contrived to creep unseen, and, getting beyond it, to conceal himself among a heap of dead. On again crept, his dark blue uniform, splashed with blood clay, enabling him to pass unnoticed among the French, till he reached an angle of the ramparts. Then he put his bugle to his lips and blew loudly and clearly, again and again, above the awful din of the assault, the French _recall_! On this the French gave way, fell back, and eventually fled across the river into Fort San Christoval, where, next day, they surrendered as prisoners of war to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the future Lord Raglan of Crimean fame. The action of José de Castro, say the Portuguese, was noised about, after the surrender of Badajoz, until it reached the ears of the Commander-in-Chief--the great Duke--who sent for him, and presented him with a sum equal to a hundred guineas English, which, in consequence of his youth, Captain Pedro de Lobiera was to pay him in small instalments. It is also said that the Duke gave the money from his own private purse. José also received a good service medal, and the Portuguese decoration No. 3. He was now only eighteen, and the honours he received might have turned an older head; but he continued to be as grave, modest, and well-dispositioned as, when a boy, Captain de Lobiera found him beside his mother's grave in the cemetery of the Penha Convent at Cintra; and while many were promoted to commissions, he followed the fortunes of the Peninsular army with his bugle slung at his back.