"Since thou art dead, to live is pain!"
But life and pain were Roland's for yet a little space, and he had need to bear him to the end a cavalier. Rousing himself from his grief, he beheld about him a mere handful of the sixty he had counted last, each fighting "as if knight there were none beside"; so, grasping Durindana, he pressed into the strife. The next instant he beheld the good archbishop flung to the ground from a dying charger. But Turpin was on his feet almost instantly; and though he bore four lance-wounds in his body, he raised his sword on high and ran to the side of Roland, crying,—
"I am not defeated! A brave soldier yields with life alone!" Then wreaked he such vengeance upon the heathen hordes that some say God wrought a miracle in his behalf.
If miracle of God there was, it was not granted to save the Christian few from destruction. In the last struggle, the valiant Turpin, wounded and afoot, and the matchless Roland faced the Moslem hosts alone.
Fled was Count Roland's pride and vanity. With certain death before him, his one thought was to summon Karl to vengeance, and to die like a cavalier. The pain in his brow, from the bursting of the vein, was growing more and more intense; not long, he knew, could his fainting spirit bide. Once again he raised his ivory horn to his lips, and sounded a call to the hosts of Charlemagne.
It was but a feeble strain, but on the north wind an answer came. Suddenly, along the pass, rang a peal of sixty thousand clarions, and the mountains caught up the strain and shouted it back again.
"King Karl! King Karl!" the echoes seemed to call to each other.
"Let us flee and save us!" cried the heathen. "These are the trumpets of France! Karl, the mighty emperor, is upon us!"
Never was heathen but trembled at that name. Aghast for one moment the hosts of the Moslem stood, then, like hunted things, they broke and fled from the field.
As the infidels gave way in dire panic, Count Roland called to the archbishop,—