Presently the artillery concussions changed the weather.  The sky became overcast, and a strong wind rose and blew away the smoke that hid the English fortresses.

Then the spectacle was fine; turreted gray walls and towers, and streaming bright flags, and jets of red fire and gushes of white smoke in long rows, all standing out with sharp vividness against the deep leaden background of the sky; and then the whizzing missiles began to knock up the dirt all around us, and I felt no more interest in the scenery.  There was one English gun that was getting our position down finer and finer all the time.  Presently Joan pointed to it and said: 

“Fair duke, step out of your tracks, or that machine will kill you.”

The Duke d’Alencon did as he was bid; but Monsieur du Lude rashly took his place, and that cannon tore his head off in a moment.

Joan was watching all along for the right time to order the assault.  At last, about nine o’clock, she cried out: 

“Now—­to the assault!” and the buglers blew the charge.

Instantly we saw the body of men that had been appointed to this service move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire of our guns had crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall to ruins; we saw this force descend into the ditch and begin to plant the scaling-ladders.  We were soon with them.  The Lieutenant-General thought the assault premature.  But Joan said: 

“Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid?  Do you not know that I have promised to send you home safe?”

It was warm work in the ditches.  The walls were crowded with men, and they poured avalanches of stones down upon us.  There was one gigantic Englishman who did us more hurt than any dozen of his brethren.  He always dominated the places easiest of assault, and flung down exceedingly troublesome big stones which smashed men and ladders both —­then he would near burst himself with laughing over what he had done.  But the duke settled accounts with him.  He went and found the famous cannoneer, Jean le Lorrain, and said: 

“Train your gun—­kill me this demon.”

He did it with the first shot.  He hit the Englishman fair in the breast and knocked him backward into the city.

The enemy’s resistance was so effective and so stubborn that our people began to show signs of doubt and dismay.  Seeing this, Joan raised her inspiring battle-cry and descended into the fosse herself, the Dwarf helping her and the Paladin sticking bravely at her side with the standard.  She started up a scaling-ladder, but a great stone flung from above came crashing down upon her helmet and stretched her, wounded and stunned, upon the ground.  But only for a moment.  The Dwarf stood her upon her feet, and straightway she started up the ladder again, crying: 

“To the assault, friends, to the assault—­the English are ours!  It is the appointed hour!”

There was a grand rush, and a fierce roar of war-cries, and we swarmed over the ramparts like ants.  The garrison fled, we pursued; Jargeau was ours!