For a time no voice answered until an aged alcaide rose and with a faltering voice uttered the word “Surrender!”
As with one voice all joined in: “Surrender!” echoes up to the domed roof, glittering with crystal damasked in deep-coloured wood—the arabesques and the fantastic devices echo it, the fairy-like arcades bordered with orange and lemon-trees carry it on to the women’s quarter beyond the Court of the Alberca, where wails and shrieks repeat it.
“Surrender!” sounds from the towers upon the cliff down to the deep valley of the Darro where the bubbling waters foam.
“Surrender!” is carried by the winds into the narrow streets of Granada, where want and famine stalk, tangible to the eye in sunken faces of famished men.
“Surrender! Yes!” cries the aged alcaide, taking up the word. “Alas! we have no food. None can reach us since the armed walls of Santa Fé command the place. We are 200,000 young and old. We are all starving. Of what avail are the Alhambra walls? The Christians are at home, well defended. Allah has willed it. Kismet! It is done. We must surrender.”
They know it, these hard-visaged Moslems sitting round on ancient seats, hiding their eyes under their vast turbans, swarthy warriors grizzled with toil, and silken, effeminate courtiers, and the imperious queen standing erect, her arms folded on her breast, yet resolute to the last.
Meanwhile, Boabdil, calm but ashen, eagerly scans each face, but speaks not. Then the fierce Mousa, the most valiant of all the Moorish knights and they are many, starts to his feet.
“Surrender!” he shouts, in a voice like a clarion. “Who dares say that word is a traitor. Surrender to whom? To Ferdinand, the Christian king? to Isabel, his slave? They are liars, invaders, giaours! Death is the least evil we have to fear from them. Surrender means plunder, sacking, the profanation of our mosques, the violation of our women, whips, chains, dungeons, the fagot, and the stake. This is surrender! Let him that has a man’s heart follow me to the Christian camp. There let us die!”
But the words of Mousa brought no response. Boabdil el Chico yielded to the general voice, and the venerable dervish, Aval-Cazem, was sent out to Santa Fé to treat for terms with the Catholic sovereigns.
Alas! Then came a night of mourning and of wailing, as the sun went down over the Alhambra in clouds of blood.