The Spanish Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

Smith to hurry a party that was a little behind the others, but he gave his orders in a quiet unagitated voice, and seemed not to be paying any heed to the gunfire and the rockets on the eastern side of the town.
    The last ladder was in place as suddenly, deep and melodious, and quite audible through the noise of the cannons, the Cathedral clock within the town began to strike the hour. ‘Now, Cameron!’ called Barnard.
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    The volley from the British troops was answered by the crash of such a fire as even the most hardened soldiers had never before experienced. A flame, darting upward, disclosed to the besiegers the horrors that lay before them. The storming-parties were some of them swarming down the ladders, and some, too impatient to await their turns, leaping down on to the hay-bags dropped into the ditch to break their fall. There, fourteen feet below the lip of the glacis, every imaginable obstacle, from broken boats to overturned wheelbarrows, had been cast to impede the progress of the attackers. All amongst them, wicked little lights burnt and spluttered. George Simmons, trying to stamp out one of these, was jerked away by a friend. ‘Leave it, man! leave it! There’s a live shell connected with it!’ The roar of an explosion drowned the words; somebody screamed, high and shrill above the uproar; a fire-ball was thrown from the ramparts, casting a red light on the scene. Men were pouring down the ladders into the inferno of bursting shells in the ditch; within a few minutes the ground was further encumbered by scores of dead and dying men; and the most horrible stench of burning flesh began to be mingled with the acrid smell of the gunpowder. Every kind of missile seemed to rain down upon the stormers. The air was thick with splinters, and loud with the roar of bursting shells, and the peculiar muffled sound of muskets fired downwards into the ditch. The Engineers, whose duty it was to lead the storming-parties, were shot down to a man. The troops, choked by the smoke, scorched by the flames, not knowing, without their guides, where to go, charged ahead to the one breach they could see, only to fall back before defences more dreadful than they had ever encountered. The breach was covered from behind by a breastwork; the slope leading up to it was strewn with crowsfeet, and with beams, studded with nails, that were hung from the edge of the breach. The men struggled up, fast diminishing in number as man after man was shot down by the steady fire maintained by the defenders behind the breastwork. But when the obstacles on the slope had been passed, the breach was found to be guarded by a hideous chevaux-de-frise of sword-blades stuck at all angles into heavy timbers that were chained to the ground. Those behind tried to thrust their foremost comrades forward; someone flung himself down on to the sword-blades in a lunatic endeavour to make of his own writhing body a bridge for the men behind him. It was in vain. While his brains were beaten out by the butts of French muskets, the storming-party was hurled back in confusion, into the indescribable hell below. Powder-barrels, rolling down upon them, exploded with deadly effect; from the breastwork the exultant French were shouting mockery and abuse, while they poured in their volleys.
    The trench was crowded not only with the dead and the wounded but with the troops which still poured down into it. Harry Smith, unscathed, was hurled against someone by the bursting of a shell, and found it to be an acquaintance from the 4th division. He shouted above the din: ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ for it had been decided that the 4th division was to wheel to the right, to attack the breach in the Trinidad bastion. ‘We couldn’t do it! The trench is flooded!’ screamed the man in his ear. ‘Half of us were drowned! There’s a cunette, full of water!’
    ‘My God, then the divisions are mingled!’ gasped Harry, realizing now why the ditch was so packed with