During the quarter of an hour that this insane enterprise went on, the lookers-on held their breath. At each volley they expected to see their champion laid low. Forgetting their own danger, they thought solely of that the audacious worker ran. When the drop came down, they uttered a loud whoop and dashed into the first yard.
The rush was so unexpected, rapid and impetuous that no resistance was made.
The frenziedly joyful cheers announced the first advantage to Launay. Nobody noticed that a man had been mangled under the bridge.
Then, as if at the depth of a cavern, the four guns, pointed out to Billet by the governor, were shot off with a dreadful crash and all the outer yard was swept clear. The iron hurricane cleft a long swath of blood through the mass; on the path lay ten or twelve dead and double as many wounded.
Billet had stood on the guardhouse roof to reach the chain well up; he slid down where he found Pitou, who had reached the spot he knew not how. The young man had a quick eye, a poacher's habit. He had seen the gunners step up to the touchhole with the lighted matches, and seizing his patron by the coat, he had pulled him back behind a corner of the wall which sheltered both from the cannonade.
From this period on, the war was real. The tumult was alarming; the onslaught murderous; ten thousand gunshots poured upon the fort at risk of slaying the assaulters with the garrison. To cap all, a field-piece brought up by the French Guardsmen, added its boom to the cracking of small arms.
The frightful uproar intoxicated the amateur fighters and began to daunt the besieged who felt that they could never raise a commotion equal to this deafening them. The officers saw that their soldiers were weakening: they had to snatch their muskets from them and fire themselves.
At this juncture, amid the roar of great guns and smaller ones, and the shouting, as the mob were rushing forward to carry away the injured and dead on litters, a little body of citizens appeared calm and unarmed at the yard entrance. It was a deputation of electors from the City Hall. They were sacrificing life under protection merely of the white flag before and after them to indicate they came to parley.