nce here the way was closed. What we did was literally to cut a path
through the throng; and over the men who fell dead or wounded beneath
our blows we made our advance. There was a curious creeping, uneasy
sensation in the region of my stomach as I trod thus on the bodies of
wounded men who were not dead yet, and felt them moving, and heard their
groaning; and I was conscious of a feeling of relief when a body that I
trod upon did not squirm beneath my foot, and so by its stillness
assured me that I was standing only on dead flesh that had no feeling in
it.

Very slowly did we go forward, for while the living barrier that we had
to deal with was not at the outset more than twenty feet, or
thereabouts, in thickness, hacking it down took us a tediously long
time. While still we faced a dozen or more very desperate fighters, who
held us off most resolutely from the metal bars which closed the way, a
pang of dread and sorrow went through me as I perceived that Fray
Antonio, who a moment before had been close beside me, had disappeared.
That he might the better restrain his longing to take part in the
fighting he had remained in the centre of our men; and it was hard to
understand how, in that position, harm could have come to him, for
missiles had no share in the work that was going forward, which was a
fiery struggle hand to hand.

As I looked for him in the throng--so far as I could do this and at the
same time keep up my guard against the man whom at that moment I was
fighting with--I saw some signs of uneasy movement among the enemy in
advance of us, and several of them evidently made an effort to reach
down as though to get at something that was on the ground; which effort
was wholly futile, for they were wedged so tightly together by our
pressure upon them that reaching downward was impossible. By a lucky
blow, I just then finished the man with whom I was contending, and so
had a moment's breathing spell; and at that instant I saw one of the
enemy, whose back was ranged against the bars, rise up in the air as
though a strong spring had been loosed beneath him, and then fall
sidewise upon the heads and shoulders of his fellows. And then, in the
place thus made vacant, the cowled head of Fray Antonio instantly
appeared--whereby I guessed, what afterwards I knew certainly, that he
had crawled along the ground through the press until he reached the
place that he aimed at, and then had risen up beneath one of the enemy