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 face of the wall. Cheers drifted up from below. The reinforcements were nearing.

But the stormers and the Ninth and Fifteenth, with the ladders, arrived first. The Voltigeurs had been halted by a wide deep ditch at the foot of the wall. The bundles of fascines were passed forward and tossed into the ditch by the stormers for pathways; squads of men rushed with the ladders; fell; rushed again—Look! Lieutenant Armistead, of the volunteer stormers from the Sixth Regiment, had planted his ladder! Down he sank, wounded—his men swarmed up nevertheless—other ladders were in place—some lurched aside or were hurled back—the Mexicans upon the walls threw hand grenades, stabbed with swords and bayonets and fired downward, but men were climbing to them hand over hand like monkeys, paused for an instant to shoot and stab and club, then disappeared. By tens and twenties the files mounted and leaped over, faster and faster; and the next thing that Jerry knew he was inside, himself.

Huzzah! The reinforcements had joined. They were the Clarke Second Brigade—they bore the colors of the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Infantry. Jerry dimly saw Hannibal in the ranks of the Eighth. There was a company of the Quitman New Yorkers, also—and of Marines, who somehow had got mixed in with the right of the brigade on the way up.

The space within the walls on the west and south-*west of the castle formed a large yard. All the yard fumed with smoke from the belching castle and from the return fire.

The Reno howitzers had been dragged in, the cap