The British batteries had found and were hammering at it; not the
guns upon Mount Olia, which had been hauled thither to dominate those
of the citadel, but a dozen 24-pounders disposed, with a line of
mortars behind them, on the lower slope above the estuary, where an
out-cropping ridge of rock gave firm ground among the sand-dunes.
The undulating line of these dunes hid this, the true breaching
battery, from view of Sergeant Wilkes and his men, though they had
halted within a hundred yards of it, and for at least an hour the
guns had been given a rest. Only, at long intervals, one or other of
the mortars threw a bomb to clear the breach--already close upon a
hundred feet wide--driven between the two flanking towers.
It was behind this breach that the town blazed. The smoke, carried
down the estuary by the land-breeze, rolled heavily across the middle
slopes of Mount Orgullo. But above it the small castle stood up
clearly, silhouetted against the western light, and from time to time
one of its guns answered the fire from Mount Olia. Save for this and
the sound of falling timbers in the town, San Sebastian kept silence.

'Wonder what it feels like?'

Sergeant Wilkes, not catching the meaning of this, turned about
slowly. The speaker was a tall young corporal, Sam Vicary by name
and by birth a Somerset lad--a curly haired, broad-shouldered fellow
with a simple engaging smile. He had come out with one of the later
drafts, and nobody knew the cause of his enlisting, but it was
supposed to be some poaching trouble at home. At all events, the
recruiting sergeant had picked up a bargain in him, for, let alone
his stature--and the Royals as a regiment prided themselves on their
inches--he was easily the best marksman in B Company. Sergeant
Wilkes, on whose recommendation he had been given his corporal's