Chapter XXI Night on the Ramparts
The Café Arcos—The Story of the Siege—Perfervour—An Oath—The Casa Alvarez—The Missing Sentry—Through the Lines—Miguel Enters Saragossa—Don Casimir is Astonished—Moonshine
On arriving with Tio Jorge at the Aljafferia Castle, Jack found that Palafox had already received from Santiago Sass news of the excellent work done in the south-eastern quarter of the city. But Tio Jorge insisted on telling the story again, and dwelt with enthusiasm on the part the English Señor had played—his idea to scale the roofs, and his intrepidity in fighting by the barricades. The big Spaniard loved a hard fighter, and Jack could have found no surer way to his confidence and respect.
“Excellent! excellent!” cried Palafox; “you came to us most opportunely, Señor. And let me tell you, the good opinion of our brave Tio Jorge is itself the highest praise. Would to God that our success had been as certain at other points! Unhappily, the French have exploded mines in the neighbourhood of Santa Engracia, and the most heroic efforts of our men have failed to dislodge them from the ground they have gained. Unhappily, also, Don Hernando de Solas, my valiant lieutenant there, was shot as he led his men for the tenth time to the assault, and I have no one whom I can conveniently send to take his place.”
“Send the English Señor,” cried Tio Jorge instantly. “He has shown what he can do; he is an officer who has served with the great Sir Moore; he is the very man for the post.”
Palafox looked for a moment doubtfully at Jack’s youthful face.
“You are young yourself, Don José,” added Tio Jorge, divining his general’s reluctance. “Por Dios! was there ever before a captain-general so young!”
“It is an arduous post,” said Palafox. “Just now it has to bear the brunt of the French attack, I fear. But you have shown valour and resource, Señor Lumsden; will you undertake the command of Don Hernando’s district?”
“I will do my best, Señor, if you entrust it to me.”
He spoke quietly, but his pulse leapt at the thought of the work opening before him. Accepting the general’s offer with alacrity, he set off in a few minutes with Tio Jorge, who had offered to introduce him to his men, and procure for him a Spanish uniform to replace his soiled garments. As they were hastening along the Coso, crowded with people now that the day’s fighting had ceased, Tio Jorge stopped at the door of a big café.
“You must be famished, Señor,” he said. “You have had nothing but a bite and a sup all day. Here is the café of my friend Jorge Arcos; let us enter. When we have eaten and drunk it will be time to seek the ramparts.”
Jack was nothing loth. In a few minutes he was seated amid a crowd of ardent Saragossans, whose blackened features and soiled garments bespoke the part they had played in the defence of their city. Jorge Arcos himself, a robust and lusty Spaniard, attended to Jack’s wants when he had learnt from Tio Jorge that the young Señor was an English officer who had done good work that day, and been entrusted by Palafox with the Santa Engracia command. The big host, as well as the miscellaneous company in the room, looked somewhat askance at the weird figure of Pepito, who had closely followed his master. His garb showed him to be one of the despised and outcast gitanos; but on Jack’s explaining that the boy had been of service to him, Arcos shrugged, and brought him some food and diluted wine, which the hungry little fellow despatched with gusto.
As he ate, Jack fell into conversation with his host, and showed a curiosity to learn something of the earlier history of the siege. The mere suggestion was enough to set the man’s tongue wagging. He evidently loved the sound of his own voice, and he owed indeed much of his popularity with the citizens to his rough-and-ready eloquence.
“A remarkable siege, you say, Señor?” he said. “It is, in truth; never was such a siege since the world began! And ’tis not the first time the French pack of wolves has come to eat us. Last year, by the favour of Our Lady of the Pillar, we escaped their greedy jaws; and now also again they shall rue the day they came a-hunting. For six weeks we have withstood them; ’tis six weeks since they began to throw their bombs and balls into our midst. Aha! and on the second day after, they sent a man to summon us to surrender. Surrender! Little they knew Don José Palafox, little they knew the hearts of our people—of Tio Jorge here, and Tio Marin, of the padres Don Basilio and Santiago Sass and Consolacion; aye, and of our noble ladies and of our poor folks such as I myself. Surrender! Why, our people well-nigh tore the French messenger in pieces! We knew they were coming to invest us; did they think we should open our gates or that our walls would fall flat as the walls of Jericho? Por Dios!”
He uttered a scornful guffaw, and shouts of approval broke from the crowd.
“No, no. We had warning; the people from the countryside came flocking in—workers in olive groves and vineyards, potters from the villages, swineherds and muleteers—and Don José gave them each his task, and with our own people they toiled night and day to make our city strong. Men and women and children, sixty thousand of us, we wrought upon the ramparts. Some carried earth in baskets, others plied the spade, others went into the outskirts with picks and axes, and levelled houses and orchards until, for half a mile round, the country was as bare as my table here, a level waste on which no enemy could find a wall or tree to shelter him. Thus we strengthened our defences, building bastions and raising mounds, till the whole city was encircled with strong ramparts from the Ebro to the Huerba.
“And all this time our people were gathering food—great stores of corn and maize, oil and fish; and some were making powder and bullets, and others were building barriers across the streets with timber and sand-bags, so that if the accursed French did break through our walls we could still fight from street to street, as you have seen to-day, Señor.”
“Yes, but they are gaining ground; how can we hold out longer, Jorge Arcos?” said a voice in the crowd.
Arcos glared around and smote upon the table.
“Where is that coward?” he cried passionately. “Where is he? For whom does the gibbet stand in the Coso? Is it not there for cowards, and weaklings, and traitors, and all who talk of surrender? Hold out longer! We have only begun. The French have got in here and there—well, what of that? Every house captured costs them a day; and every day brings our triumph nearer. Have we not ample food? Is there a wretch in Saragossa who complains of hunger? Set him before me; let me see his face; he shall prove his words here in my presence, or—” He made a significant gesture, and continued: “No, we are not hungry; we can hold out for months; and meanwhile friends are hastening to our succour. North and south, east and west, armies are collecting. The French shall be hemmed round like pigs for the butcher; the February rains shall descend and flood their trenches; and by the grace of Our Lady of the Pillar we shall be able once again to foil the plans of the Corsican dog, and the men of Aragon will set such an example to the men of Andalusia and Castile, of Leon and Estremadura, of Catalonia and Navarre, that no Frenchman shall be left alive between the mountains and the sea.”
Loud vivas rang through the room as Arcos brought his oration to a close. It was no surprise to Jack to hear such a speech from the lips of an ordinary café-keeper—every Spaniard is an orator,—but he by no means shared the speaker’s assurance. The influx of so many people from the country must have swelled the population far beyond its normal limit. Overcrowding involved disease; the encroachments of the French must constantly narrow the habitable region; in the exposed parts only the vaults and cellars would be safe from bombardment; and while the operations of war claimed their full tale of victims, Jack feared that pestilence would carry off still more. But he said not a word of his apprehensions, and soon afterwards, bidding his host and the company a cordial adieu, he left with Tio Jorge and Pepito.
They passed the Franciscan convent beyond the Coso, cut through narrow tortuous side streets, each barricaded and guarded, passed the Capuchin nunnery, and came at length to the district of Santa Engracia, in which a few days before the French had gained a lodgment by sapping and mining and direct assault. As they passed along a street from which the French had been driven at the point of the bayonet, but which was now a mere heap of charred and smoking ruins, Jack saw a young lady standing before the smouldering embers of one of the houses. By her side was a little boy. The lady, who could not have been more than twenty-five years of age, was pale and haggard, and gazed upon the ruins of her home like a very statue of sorrow. As Tio Jorge and Jack came up to her, they heard her talking to the boy in low fierce tones.
“It is the Doña Mercedes Ortega,” said Tio Jorge half to himself. “What is the matter, Señora?” he asked.
She turned and threw back her mantilla. Jack had never seen a face in which utter woe and desolation was so piteously imprinted. Her eyelids were swollen with weeping; her eyes blazed out of dark sunken rims; her lips were quivering.
“That was my home,” she said in an agony of grief that Jack never forgot. “My husband lies there, and my father. My brothers died on the ramparts; my little girl died of fever in my arms. Only Juanino is left, only Juanino, he and I; we are alone—alone—alone!”
Jack turned away; there was a mist before his eyes. Then suddenly the woman’s tone changed from grief to rage. Her next words seemed to bite into Jack’s soul.
“Stay, Señor!” she cried; “stay, Tio Jorge! I call you to witness what I teach my Juanino. Yes, I teach him; he will never forget; it is for a mother to teach her son his duty. He shall be a scourge to all the accursed race. He shall kill, kill, kill, knowing no rest till he join his father—his father whom the French have killed!”
The boy looked up in her face with eyes of terror.
“Put your hands together,” she continued, “and swear that henceforth, in war or peace, at home or abroad, in the street or in the field, you will kill every Frenchman you may meet, kill without mercy or ruth, and thus avenge me and all your house. Swear, Juanino!”
Jack shuddered as he heard the little fellow, whose age was perhaps seven years, repeat the terrible oath his frantic mother demanded of him. At that moment the horrors of war were brought home to Jack’s mind more forcibly than ever before; nothing in the terrible retreat to Corunna had been so terrible as the picture of the young widow’s desolate grief and passionate longing for vengeance.
He passed on, with Tio Jorge and Pepito, into a small plaza out of which several narrow streets radiated. The place was familiar to him, and a few steps farther on he recognized the Casa Alvarez, and remembered, what he had forgotten till now, that the house of his old friend stood almost within a stone’s-throw of the Santa Engracia convent.
“This was the head-quarters of Don Hernando,” said Tio Jorge. “You had better make it yours also, Señor.”
“Yes. But let us go on to the ramparts now. I want to see the position, and the men. Do you know, by the by, what has become of the family of Don Fernan Alvarez? The old Señor himself is dead.”
“I cannot tell you, Señor. He was a good man, was Don Fernan. He had one daughter; was it not so? But they were far above a poor man like me, and I know nothing about the Señorita.”
Jack felt a curious pleasure in knowing that the Casa Alvarez was in his own district, and would actually be his head-quarters. Hastening down the street towards the walls, he enquired whether the ramparts were manned in force at night in anticipation of attack during the hours of darkness. Tio Jorge informed him that the French had not risked a night attack in force since the beginning of the siege. They continued their mining operations, but they had found it so difficult to make headway above-ground, even in the daylight, that actual assaults and fighting seldom or never occurred between dark and dawn. The ramparts were therefore guarded by a sufficient number of sentries, but not occupied in force, the defenders being only too glad to recruit their overtaxed energies with sleep. When Jack arrived at the wall he found sentries posted at intervals of a few yards. He learnt from Tio Jorge that his command extended from the Santa Engracia convent some fifty yards to the north, where it adjoined the Porta Quemada district under the charge of a personal friend of Palafox, Don Casimir Ulloa. It happened that Don Casimir was making a round of his sentries before leaving for the night, and to him Jack was introduced by Tio Jorge at the point where their commands met. Tio Jorge then took his leave, promising to call at the Casa Alvarez on the way back, and see that a room was arranged for the Señor’s occupation.
“Is all quiet to-night, Señor?” asked Jack, after the first compliments had passed.
“Yes; nothing has happened since the French blew up a house by the Santa Engracia convent just before dark. But one thing puzzles me, Señor. Do you know this part of the city?”
“I was here once before, but that was six years ago, and I was too much a child then to remember it well now.”
“But you will know that beyond the wall here, which has been greatly strengthened and thickened, the ground slopes steeply down to the River Huerba. You can see it; the water shines in the moonlight. On the other side of the ravine, at the top, are the French trenches.”
“I see. What puzzles you, Señor?”
“I am coming to it. Every night for ten days past I have been at this spot at this hour, and every night I have either seen or heard a French sentry exactly opposite. To-night, however, there is a difference. At dusk we saw the Frenchman tramping up and down behind the trench, just out of range of your good English muskets, Señor; we heard the guard changed; but a few minutes ago, when I looked, I found that the sentry had disappeared. Perhaps my eyes are at fault. Will you look, Señor?”
Jack looked across the ravine. A pale half-moon was shining, as yet somewhat low in the sky, and the ravine and river-bed were gloomed by black shadows. The line of the entrenchments showed rugged against the background, in which watch-fires here and there marked the night bivouac of the French. From the far distance came faint and fitful noises; the gurgling wash of the river against its embankments made the only sound in the vicinity. Jack ran his eyes along the edge of the entrenchment for a hundred yards in each direction. Certainly no sentinel was in sight.
“Perhaps he is resting,” he remarked. “There is no need for him to tramp up and down in sight all the time.”
“True, Señor, but why to-night? Why on this night should we miss what we have seen without exception for many nights past?”
“It is certainly strange. I shouldn’t think it implied any particular danger of an attack; should you?”
At this moment Pepito touched him on the arm.
“Something crawling, Señor!” he said.
He pointed across the river towards a spot in deep shadow half-way down the opposite slope. Jack looked in that direction, but failed to perceive any moving object.
“You are mistaken, Pepito,” he said.
The gipsy was stretched now at full length on the wall, peering, with his hands arching his eyes, into the darkness.
“A man crawling!” he whispered. “See!”
Jack and Don Casimir followed the boy’s example, and, keeping the moonlight from their eyes, at length discerned a dark figure crawling slowly down the steep. A moment later, all three caught sight of a second figure following at a short interval the first.
“They are coming within range,” whispered Don Casimir. “I will order my men to shoot.”
“Stay!” said Jack quickly. “Let us wait. Pass the word along the sentries not to shoot if they see two men approaching. Two men will not overpower us and capture the city, Señor; there is something puzzling, as you say, in all this. We must find out what it means.”
The men had now reached the foot of the opposite slope. On the ramparts several pairs of eyes were watching them eagerly. At the brink of the river they halted for a moment, then stepped into the water. Jack looked questioningly at Don Casimir.
“Yes,” said the latter, “the Huerba is fordable here.”
Two figures were wading through the water. They gained the nearer bank; they climbed up. When on dry land again they no longer crawled, but clambered as rapidly as might be up the steep ascent to the wall. Jack felt growing interest and excitement as they came up foot by foot, with no attempt at concealment. They were within four yards of the wall.
“Quien vive?” asked Don Casimir in clear low tones.
“Silencio!” said the first of the two figures, holding up a warning hand. “I am a friend; help me up.”
The wall was some fourteen feet in height, and there was no apparent means of assisting the man below.
“If two of your men let down their muskets, I can catch hold of them,” said the man in a whisper.
The hint was acted on. Don Casimir beckoned up two of his men, who laid themselves flat on the wall, lowering their muskets until the man below was able to grasp a barrel in each hand. Then they gradually drew up the weapons hand over hand, and the man with them. Don Casimir, with drawn sword, kept a sharp look-out to assure himself that the new-comers were alone, and that this strange incident was not part of a French plot to rush the wall.
In half a minute the spokesman was standing beside the little group.
“Do I see Don Casimir?” he said, looking keenly at the Spaniard, who had given a start of recognition as his features came into view above the parapet.
“Yes, Señor,” replied Don Casimir with a bow. “This is a strange meeting.”
“Strange indeed! Ah, what an hour it has been! I thought we should never have got through. Turn where we would, the French seemed to have sentries everywhere.”
“Except yonder, Don Miguel,” said Jack quietly, coming a little more distinctly into view.
Miguel made a quick turn at the sound of his voice, and with a scarcely perceptible pause said:
“Ah! my dear young friend, who would have thought of seeing you here? What a pleasant meeting! Yes, as you say, except yonder. But, as it happens, the sentry yonder is now keeping guard in another world.” He tapped the hilt of his sword significantly. “We were not in the mood to brook delay, and he was—well, one Frenchman the less.”
“All the same, they have replaced him pretty soon,” remarked Jack dryly, “unless that is his ghost.”
He pointed, as he spoke, to the form of a sentry leaning on his musket at the spot that had been described to him by Don Casimir as the customary post.
“It is strange,” replied Miguel musingly; “one might have expected a commotion—when they found the body. But, yes—no doubt they hush these things up. It would reflect on their discipline.”
Don Casimir, who had been looking from one to the other in some astonishment, here interposed.
“But—do I understand, Don Miguel, that you have come through the French lines?”
“Why, certainly, my friend; how else should I be here? We are from Seville, from the Supreme Junta, with despatches. We have ridden post-haste four hundred and fifty miles in six days, as my friend here must know, and by a miracle have succeeded in eluding the wolves yonder. But that reminds me—I should lose no time in delivering my despatches to the captain-general. I suppose he is still in the Aljafferia? How goes it in Saragossa? I fear you have been hard pressed.”
“Yes, indeed,” replied Don Casimir. “But the pack of wolves outside is being thinned. Every yard costs a man.”
“Ah! I shall have much to hear,” said Miguel, with a meaning look at Jack; “and on my side I have not a little to tell. Adios, Señores!”
With a low bow he turned away, followed by his companion, whom Jack had at once recognized, when he gained the summit of the wall, as the one-eyed servitor of evil memory. There was no look of recognition in the man’s fixed stare as he left the group a few paces behind his master. Jack, however, was amused to note the attitude of Pepito, who stood fingering his little knife with an air of tragedy worthy of Mr. Kean himself.
“It was a daring feat,” said Don Casimir, looking into the moonlit distance as if gauging the difficulties that must have beset any attempt to approach Saragossa from that side. “Indeed, except yourself, I believe no one has got in for at least three weeks past. But we have always known Don Miguel as a match for any Frenchman. He gave many proofs of astuteness during the first siege. He is not easy to beat when readiness and resourcefulness are needed. It is strange,” he added after an interval, during which his eye rested on the figure of the French sentry, “very strange. I could have sworn it is the same man—the man I missed an hour ago. But, of course, it cannot be.”
“The moonlight may be deceptive,” suggested Jack; but as he left the spot to return to his quarters he looked thoughtful.