lung their bows upon their backs, drew their short swords,
and in their turn charged.

Five minutes afterwards everything was over. Joshua's soldiers threw
down their arms, and ran or galloped to right and left, save a number
of them who fled through the gates of the palace, which they had opened,
and across the drawbridge into the courtyards within. After them, or,
rather, mixed up with them, followed the Mountaineers, killing all whom
they could find, for they were out of hand and would not listen to the
commands of Maqueda and their officers, that they should show mercy.

So, just as the dawn broke this strange moonlit battle ended, a small
affair, it is true, for there were only five hundred men engaged upon
our side and three or four thousand on the other, yet one that cost
a great number of lives and was the beginning of all the ruin that
followed.

Well, we were safe for a while, since it was certain, after the lesson
which he had just learned, that Joshua would not attempt to storm the
double walls and fosse of the palace without long preparation. Yet even
now a new trouble awaited us, for by some means, we never discovered
how, that wing of the palace in which Maqueda's private rooms were
situated suddenly burst into flames.

Personally, I believe that the fire arose through the fact that a lamp
had been left burning near the bed of the Child of Kings upon which
was laid the body of Sergeant Quick. Perhaps a wounded man hidden there
overturned the lamp; perhaps the draught blowing through the open doors
brought the gold-spangled curtains into contact with the wick.

At any rate, the wood-panelled chambers took fire, and had it not
happened that the set of the wind was favourable, the whole palace
might have been consumed. As it was, we succeeded in confining the
conflagration to this particular part of it, which within two hours had
burnt out, leaving nothing standing but the stark, stone walls.

Such was the funeral pyre of Sergeant Quick, a noble one, I thought to
myself, as I watched it burn.

When the fire was so well under control, for we had pulled down the
connecting passage where Higgs and Quick fought their great fight, that
there was no longer any danger of its spreading, and the watches had
been set, at length we got some rest.

Maqueda and two or three of her ladies, one of them, I remember, her
old nurse who had brought her up, for her mother died at her birth, took
possession of some empt