steering the hoop around the corner; and so he had stopped and
was listening–the hoop was rolling away, doing its own steering. I
saw a young girl prettily framed in an open window, a
watering-pot in her hand and window-boxes of red flowers under
its spout–but the water had ceased to flow; the girl was listening.
Everywhere were these impressive petrified forms; and
everywhere was suspended movement and that awful stillness.
Joan of Arc raised her sword in the air. At the signal, the silence
was torn to rags; cannon after cannon vomited flames and smoke
and delivered its quaking thunders; and we saw answering tongues
of fire dart from the towers and walls of the city, accompanied by
answering deep thunders, and in a minute the walls and the towers
disappeared, and in their place stood vast banks and pyramids of
snowy smoke, motionless in the dead air. The startled girl dropped
her watering-pot and clasped her hands together, and at that
moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair body.
The great artillery duel went on, each side hammering away with
all its might; and it was splendid for smoke and noise, and most
exalting to one’s spirits. The poor little town around about us
suffered cruelly. The cannon-balls tore through its slight buildings,
wrecking them as if they had been built of cards; and every
moment or two one would see a huge rock come curving through
the upper air above the smoke-clouds and go plunging down
through the roofs. Fire broke out, and columns of flame and smoke
rose toward the sky.
Presently the artillery concussions changed the weather. The sky
became overcast, and a strong wind rose and blew away the smoke
that hid the English fortresses.
Then the spectacle was fine; turreted gray walls and towers, and
streaming bright flags, and jets of red fire and gushes of white
smoke in long rows, all standing out with sharp vividness against
the deep leaden background of the sky; and then the whizzing
missiles began to knock up the dirt all around us, and I felt no
more interest in the scenery. There was one English gun that was
getting our position down finer and finer all the time. Presently
Joan pointed to it and said:
“Fair duke, step out of your tracks, or that machine will kill you.”
The Duke d’Alen‡on did as he was bid; but Monsieur du Lude
rashly took his place, and that cannon tore his head off in a
moment.
Joan was watching all along for the right time to order the assault.
At last, about nine o’clock, she cried out:
“Now–to the assault!” and the buglers blew the charge.
Instantly we saw the body of men that had been appointed to this
service move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire
of our guns had crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall
to ruins; we saw this force descend into the ditch and begin to
plant the scaling-ladders. We were soon with them. The
Lieutenant-General thought the assault premature. But Joan said:
“Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid? Do you not know that I have
promised to send you home safe?”
It was warm work in the ditches. The walls were crowded with
men, and they poured avalanches of stones down upon us. There
was one gigantic Englishman who did us more hurt than any dozen
of his brethren. He always dominated the places easiest of assault,
and flung down exceedingly troublesome big stones which
smashed men and ladders both–then he would near burst himself
with laughing over what he had done. But the duke settled
accounts with him. He went and found the famous cannoneer, Jean
le Lorrain, and said:
“Train your gun–kill me this demon.”
He did it with the first shot. He hit the Englishman fair in the
breast and knocked him backward into the city.
The enemy’s resistance was so effective and so stubborn that our
people began to show signs of doubt and dismay. Seeing this, Joan
raised her inspiring battle-cry and descended into the fosse herself,
the Dwarf helping her and the Paladin sticking bravely at her side
with the standard. She started up a scaling-ladder, but a great stone