All was dismay within the Spanish lines. The Count de Blas died in the
arms of the men who were bearing him into the castle; and Don Joseph de
Penil was so severely wounded, that he dropped off his horse as soon
as it had cleared the draw-bridge into the fortress. Half the garrison
was slain or missing; and no officers of rank returned alive from the
field, but what were borne in on their cloaks,--sad, mangled victims of
the preceding rashness.
When De Penil's wounds were dressed, and he heard the state of his men,
he was driven to despair. He called for the Marquis de Montemar, as the
only person in whose steadiness to the last, he felt he could place any
confidence. All who approached him came trembling; and, from confusion
of mind, contradicted each other in every account of the garrison,
excepting the one, that its destruction was now inevitable!
When Louis obeyed the General's summons, he corroborated the
observations of De Penil's own senses; and told him that a contagious
fear unmanned every heart; and that the eyes of the soldiers
continually turned towards the sea, with a more evident wish for escape
than resistance. While Don Joseph listened to the consequences of his
own headstrong folly, and saw the bloody evidence of the courage he had
pretended to doubt, on the cheek of the brave narrator, he obeyed the
noble shame which coloured his own; and, having uttered a frank apology
for his former conduct, as frankly asked for his opinion on the present
crisis.
Louis did not hesitate to say, that he believed the Moors could not see
their advantage without attempting to storm the place.
"And they will take it to a certainty," replied De Penil. "In the
present disposition of the men there can be no resistance."
"Without resistance they are lost!" returned Louis. "There are no ships
for flight, and the Moors grant no terms in a surrender."
"Then every man must fight for his life!" cried De Penil. "I will
yet do my duty from this bed; and you, De Montemar, must act from my
authority."
Louis did not now demur. He was ready to do all in his power to stop
the torrent, whose sluice he would have prevented being broken down.
Without losing time in sending for those paralized officers, who
wandered from place to place at their wit's end, De Penil consulted
his young co-adjutor on every resource; and while he marvelled at so
comprehensive a judgment in so inexperienced a soldier, he adopted
so many of his suggestions, that dispositions were soon made for the
defence of Ceuta, of better promise than those which had placed it in
such extremity.
Louis wrote down the necessary arrangement; and when it was finished,
the wounded General was laid on a litter, and carried out along the
ramparts; where, after he had said a few words of encouragement to the
soldiers, Louis read aloud the different orders for the defence of the
garrison.
De Penil was too conscious of the evil his impatience had wrought, not
to do his utmost to prevent yet more disastrous consequences; and,
while he exhorted the men to stand to their guns, and never to leave
their ground but with their lives, he himself took an oath before them
never to surrender. He told them to obey the Marquis de Montemar as his
representative.
"But for his promptitude in mounting the battery which covered our
retreat, and his steadiness in maintaining it," added the General, "we
should not now have Ceuta to defend."
The soldiers knew this as well as their commander, and with a sincere
hurrah of obedience, followed their officers to their respective duties.
Exhausted, and almost fainting, De Penil ordered the litter to his
quarters; but he held himself up with assumed strength, till the walls
of his apartment permitted over-tasked nature to sink under the pain of
his wounds.
Louis's spirit rose with the summons for exertion. His calm
collectiveness in dispensing his commands, and instant apprehension
of what was most proper to be done, from objects of the greatest
importance to the minutest inquiry from the meanest workmen in the
lines, revived courage in the faintest heart, and inspired the brave
with an animation equal to his own. After he had seen every thing
prepared for the anticipated assault, he returned to De Penil, to
inform him of the favourable aspect his commands had produced.
Having found the General in a state of anxiety that looked for such
intelligence to enable him to seek the repose his condition needed, he
closed his communications with assurances of hope; and, leaving him to
rest, proceeded to the quarters of Don Ferdinand.
His wound was deep, but not dangerous; yet the alarm for his life had
been so great, before the extraction of the ball, that one of the
surgeons dispatched a messenger immediately across the strait, with
intelligence to Santa Cruz of the perilous state of his son, and the
jeopardy of the garrison.
When Louis found what had been done, he reprimanded the man for
presuming to send off any account, before the official reports of the
affair could be duly ascertained. The other surgeons assured the young
commander that his friend was not to be despaired of; and, with the
feelings of a brother for the son of the revered Santa Cruz, he entered
his apartment.
"De Montemar," cried Ferdinand, stretching out his hand to him, "dearer
lips than mine must thank you that I live."
Louis smiled as he used to do in his unclouded days of happiness:--"God
is good in yet giving life a value to me, by making me his instrument
to preserve my friend. While I may be such," added he, with a deeper
expression, and pressing Ferdinand's hand between his, "I feel the son
of Ripperda is not completely lost!"
Ferdinand did not understand all the reference of this almost
unconscious apostrophe; but supposing it arose from some free remarks
of the Count de Patinos which might have reached his ear, he replied
with earnestness:--"_Il rit bien, qui rit le dernier!_ The sneers
which De Patinos dared venture against the Duke de Ripperda's escape
from his enemies, and the unsullied honour of De Montemar, were visited
on his head this day. I saw him fly before the negro guards of Aben
Humeya; and I have since been told, that he and his whole squadron
threw down their arms before the barbarian."
"That they may be his prisoners," replied Louis, "is too likely; but
whatever may be the Count de Patinos' ungenerous enmity against men who
never voluntarily gave him offence, I must exonerate him of the charge
of cowardice. I believe him brave; and all I have now to wish is, that
he may be treated according to his merits as a soldier, by the hands
into which he has fallen."
At nine o'clock, Louis went the round of his posts, and found all in
good order. The men were in spirits, though it was easy to discern,
even by the naked eye, that a threatening commotion continued along
the enemy's lines.
By his glass, earlier in the evening, he had observed the approach of
artillery, and some other signs which convinced him of the necessity
of Don Joseph's precaution. For his own part, he never retired under
cover the whole night, but kept his station on the best point of
observation,--a tower at the extremity of the outworks.
About the watch of the night, which is called by the Moors, _Latumar_,
being their fifth hour of prayer, the sky was involved in total
darkness; but the attentive ear of Louis heard a distant murmuring. It
was demonstrative of the approach he expected; and having persons near
him for the purpose, he dispatched them to the lines to order every one
to be prepared.
In less than a quarter of an hour after he had taken his own most
efficient station, the flash of cannon and of musquetry lit the plain
for a moment, like the splendour of day; and, in the next, the roaring
of the guns, and the smoke of the explosion, rocked the fortress to its
foundation, and involved the whole atmosphere in sulphureous clouds.
The ordnance on the walls of Ceuta were not silent; and the mutual
bombardment in the intermitting darkness, was rendered more terrific
by the savage cries of the besiegers mingling their horrid war-whoop
with the hissing of the musquetry, and the tremendous thunders of the
cannonade.
Where his father was in the midst of this dreadful contest, more
than once shot in direful question across the mind of Louis; but he
dismissed the paralyzing thought. He was there to defend the cause of
his country and the faith of his fathers; and he must not allow the
yearnings of his heart to unman his fidelity.
He flew from the bastion on which he stood, at the moment he heard a
cry of triumph from the scene below. In defiance of shells and raking
fires, these desperate barbarians had rushed on, and pointed their
guns till a breach was made. Louis ordered a rampart to be immediately
raised on the ruins, but the gabions were hardly rolled forward, and
the cannon planted, when a tumbrel blew up, and rendered the egress
wider and more accessible than before. The stone battlements shook
under his feet like an earthquake, while the fragments from the torn
rampart, the smoke, and the scorching powder, covered him with viewless
horror. There was not the pause of a moment between the explosion, the
dispersion of the smoke, and the most dreadful conflict of the day.
Aben Humeya had prepared for an escalade; and the very band which
planted the crescent on the towers of Larach, was the first who scaled
the walls of Ceuta. The contest at the breach was as sanguinary as it
was decisive. The Moors were twice repulsed with terrible slaughter;
and the more terrible the second time, as it was quickly known, by
the intrepid desperation of the assailants, that they were led on by
the Basha himself. Louis's unreceding arm had tumbled the leader of
the first division from his footing on the wall; and at his fall his
followers had given ground. On the second assault, he was contending
with the invincible devotedness of a man who knew that spot was the key
of the fortress, when his father's voice assailed his ear. A flash of
musketry shewed the jewelled chelengk in his turban, as he mounted the
farther ridge of the platform, slippery with blood, and called on his
men to support him. In another moment, two Biscayan grenadiers held
the Basha between their weapons and the pinnacle of the battlement.
A choice of death seemed the only alternative,--their swords, or
precipitation over the precipice. The Moors who pressed forward, were
cut to pieces by the Spaniards on the breach; and Louis saw nothing but
destruction to his father, when rushing towards the spot, in the moment
Ripperda's weapon shivered against those of his enemies, he threw
himself, sword in hand, between the Biscayans and their prey, franticly
exclaiming:
"The Basha is the governor's prisoner." But the strokes which were
levelled at Ripperda's breast were sheathed in his son's. Before the
Spaniards could check their arms, he was cut through the shoulder and
stabbed in his side; but the men recoiled on finding they had wounded
their leader; and in the instant, Sidi Ali mounting the height with a
fresh horde of triumphant Moors, they surrounded Aben Humeya, believing
the day won. But as Ali's hand planted the Ottoman standard amidst the
still grappling of foe to foe, and the anathemas of the Christian
against the ferocious curses of the Moor, the clouds of smoke rolled
away from the eastern point of the rampart, and the golden head of the
sun peered from the horizon. Its first ray shot direct upon the radiant
crest of Aben Humeya, and a rifle took aim. The ball struck; and, in
spite of a momentary exertion in its victim to spring forward, he
staggered and fell into the arms of his followers.
A woeful yell announced to the legions below, that some direful
disaster had happened. The cry was echoed from rank to rank with
shrieks and howlings; and a single blast of a trumpet immediately
succeeded. The breach was abandoned, as if by enchantment. The firing
sunk at once into a dead calm; and the flight of the Moors through the
yet hovering smoke, sounded in the darkness like the wings of many
birds brushing the sands before the sweep of some coming storm.