Jack had until now been caught between a desire to make sure that Dappa didn’t do it wrong, and a natural concern for what was approaching. To describe the foremost of the attackers as irregulars would have been to give far too high an estimate of their discipline, motives, armaments, and appearance; they were thieves, avaricious bystanders, micro-ethnic-groups, and a few Janissaries who had broken ranks when they had caught sight of gold bars. Most of these had faltered when they had caught sight of the cannon. But awareness had now propagated up the street that it was still in the process of being loaded. Meanwhile the French platoons had re-formed and begun marching in good order down the hill, reaming the street clear in a manner very like what the gun-swab would have done to the barrel of the cannon, had Dappa not elected to omit that step. The emboldened rabble swarming out from their places of concealment mingled together with the not-so-emboldened ones being rammed down the street by this piston of French troops and all joined together into—