Already the scent of treason is in the air!
Here a wild clamour breaks in upon his thoughts. The white walls of Cordoba are in front, and a mighty shout of “Allah! there is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his Prophet,” rises from a thousand throats of swarthy Africans, careering wildly over the grass, Numidians, with fringed bands and armlets on elbow and ankle, sun-dried sheikhs and wandering Kalenders and Fakirs in the front of the great army, mounted on camels and mules.
For three long months Pelistes, well-named the “Father of the Goths,” defended the battered Convent of St. George, within which he barricaded himself. Hope of succour supports his courage. Teodomir may come, or young Pelayo, from Asturia or Leon.
But day follows day, and night passes on to night, under the lustre of the southern stars, and no help comes. Eager eyes hail every cloud of dust that sweeps the plain, and interpret dark shadows of the clouds, which summer tempests cast, into troops of Christian knights approaching. Alas! no human form is visible, save now and then an Arab horseman, riding with light rein, charged with some mission from Mousa in the south.
Famine, too, comes to try them with its ghastly face. One by one they kill the horses, which had carried them so gallantly from the Guadalete (to a trooper an act as repulsive as the murdering of his child), and strive with divers ills which hunger brings.
Pelistes, unable to bear the sight of the sufferings of his friends, assembles what remains of the miserable garrison, and thus speaks his mind: