no more. He piled a bulwark of iron-clad dead in front of him and
fought from behind it; and at last when the victory was ours we
closed about him, shielding him, and he ran up a ladder with Joan
as easily as another man would carry a child, and bore her out of
the battle, a great crowd following and anxious, for she was
drenched with blood to her feet, half of it her own and the other
half English, for bodies had fallen across her as she lay and had
poured their red life-streams over her. One couldn’t see the white
armor now, with that awful dressing over it.
The iron bolt was still in the wound–some say it projected out
behind the shoulder. It may be–I did not wish to see, and did not
try to. It was pulled out, and the pain made Joan cry again, poor
thing. Some say she pulled it out herself because others refused,
saying they could not bear to hurt her. As to this I do not know; I
only know it was pulled out, and that the wound was treated with
oil and properly dressed.
Joan lay on the grass, weak and suffering, hour after hour, but still
insisting that the fight go on. Which it did, but not to much
purpose, for it was only under her eye that men were heroes and
not afraid. They were like the Paladin; I think he was afraid of his
shadow–I mean in the afternoon, when it was very big and long;
but when he was under Joan’s eye and the inspiration of her great
spirit, what was he afraid of? Nothing in this world–and that is just
the truth.
Toward night Dunois gave it up. Joan heard the bugles.
“What!” she cried. “Sounding the retreat!”
Her wound was forgotten in a moment. She countermanded the
order, and sent another, to the officer in command of a battery, to
stand ready to fire five shots in quick successin. This was a signal
to the force on the Orleans side of the river under La Hire, who
was not, as some of the histories say, with us. It was to be given
whenever Joan should feel sure the boulevard was about to fall
into her hands–then that force must make a counter-attack on the
Tourelles by way of the bridge.
Joan mounted her horse now, with her staff about her, and when
our people saw us coming they raised a great shout, and were at
once eager for another assault on the boulevard. Joan rode straight
to the fosse where she had received her wound, and standing there
in the rain of bolts and arrows, she ordered the Paladin to let her
long standard blow free, and to note when its fringes should touch
the fortress. Presently he said:
“It touches.”
“Now, then,” said Joan to the waiting battalions, “the place is
yours–enter in! Bugles, sound the assault! Now, then–all
together–go!”
And go it was. You never saw anything like it. We swarmed up the
ladders and over the battlements like a wave–and the place was
our property. Why, one might live a thousand years and never see
so gorgeous a thing as that again. There, hand to hand, we fought
like wild beasts, for there was no give-up to those English–there
was no way to convince one of those people but to kill him, and
even then he doubted. At least so it was thought, in those days, and
maintained by many.
We were busy and never heard the five cannonshots fired, but they
were fired a moment after Joan had ordered the assault; and so,
while we were hammering and being hammerd in the smaller
fortress, the reserve on the Orleans side poured across the bridge
and attacked the Tourelles from that side. A fire-boat was brought
down and moored under the drawbridge which connected the
Tourelles with our boulevard; wherefore, when at last we drove
our English ahead of us and they tried to cross that drawbridge and
join their friends in the Tourelles, the burning timbers gave way
under them and emptied them in a mass into the river in their