ustn't fight that swash-buckler! They say he hath been fencer
to the Sophy," roared the Major, in the words of Sir Toby Belch.

The combatants just turned their heads for a moment, to look at the
interrupter, and again crossed swords.

Immediately on finding his remonstrance disregarded, the Major descended
personally into the arena--not by the ordinary route of the stairs, but
the shorter one of a perpendicular drop from the gallery, not effected
with the lightness of a feathered Mercury. But the clatter of his
descent was lost in the concussion of a discharge of artillery that
shook the walls. Instantly the air was alive with shot and hissing
shells; and before the echoes of the first discharge had ceased, the
successive explosion of the shells in the air, and the crashing of
chimneys, shattered doors, and falling masonry, increased the uproar.
One shell burst in the court, filling it with smoke. My grandfather
felt, for a minute, rather dizzy with the shock. When the smoke cleared,
by which time he had partially recovered himself, the first object that
caught his eye was Von Dessel lying on the pavement, and the doctor
stooping over him. The only other person hurt was Rushton, a great piece
of the skin of whose forehead, detached by a splinter, was hanging over
his right eye. Von Dessel had sustained a compound fracture of the
thigh, while the loss of two fingers from his right hand had spoiled his
thrust in tierce for ever.

"What can be the matter?" said my grandfather, looking upward, as a
second flight of missiles hurtled overhead.

"Matter enough," quoth Rushton, mopping the blood from his eye with his
handkerchief; "those cursed devils of Spaniards are bombarding the
town."

The Major went up to Owen, and squeezed his hand. "We won't abuse the
Spaniards for all that," said he--"they've saved your life, my boy."

CHAPTER IV.

Enraged at seeing their blockade evaded by the arrival of Darby's fleet,
the Spaniards revenged themselves by directing such a fire upon
Gibraltar, from their batteries in the Neutral Ground, as in a short
time reduced the town to a mass of ruins. This misfortune was rendered
the more intolerable to the besieged, as it came in the moment of
exultation and general thanksgiving. While words of congratulation were
passing from mouth to mouth, the blow descended, and "turned to groans
their roundelay."

The contrast between the elation of the inhabitants when my grandfather
entered