with such sudden violence that he fairly had sent the man spinning
upward into the air. What his purpose was I saw in a moment, for no
sooner did he stand upright than he had his hands upon the metal bars,
and then I heard the clinking together of stone and metal as he lifted
them bodily away.

XXIV.

THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE

Rayburn gave a great roar of gladness as the clinking sound made him
turn and he saw what was going forward; and Young and I joined him in
lusty Anglo-Saxon cheering, while our allies, in the savage fashion
natural to them, vented their joy in shrill yells. In the midst of which
cheering and yelling we pushed forward so hotly that the enemy,
disconcerted by this sudden shifting of fortune in our favor, and the
men directly in front of us being most seriously incommoded by their
comrade lying sprawled out and kicking upon their heads and shoulders,
seemed suddenly to lose heart so completely that we had no difficulty
in cutting them down. Even had they not been too closely wedged in to
turn upon Fray Antonio, our strong dashing upon them would have
compelled them to leave him unharmed in order to defend themselves; and
so it was that, by the time we had cut a path to the portal, the monk
had released the whole tier of bars from their fastenings, and the way
was free.

As we sprang down the steps--with Fray Antonio, once more in the guise
of a non-combatant, safe in the midst of our company--we heard a great
outcry from below, and saw a considerable body of men marching up
towards us steadily from the water-side; but the alarm that sight of
them gave us was only momentary, for their shouts, and the shouts of our
men in answer, showed us that these were friends come to our support.
However we had no great need of them, for those of the enemy whom we
left alive behind us seemed suddenly to have grown sick of fighting, and
made no attempt to follow after us down the stairs. Yet the coming of
this supporting force, to be just in the matter, no doubt was the saving
of us; for more than half of the men who had been with us when we
started on our march down through the city had been slain by the way,
and nearly all in our company were more or less disabled by wounds.
Tizoc and Young and Rayburn had come through it all without as much as a
scratch, and because of their extraordinary strength these three were
almost as fresh as when the fighting began; but the rest of us were
sorely weary, a