Forgetful of all else, his brain on fire at the sight, Raimondo sprang ahead of his men, his keen blade whirling round his head. By the sheer fury of his onslaught he burst through the grim ranks of the heathen, and smiting with all his vigour at the head of the captor of his beloved one, slew, not his foe, alas! but her for whom he would gladly have given his life. The terrible blow cleft her fair body almost in twain, as the heathen giant held her before himself shieldwise to meet it. The distracted commandant’s first impulse was to fling himself upon that beloved corpse and accompany her spirit to heaven, but that thought was conquered by the knowledge of his high responsibilities. And with a shout of “Mary” he recovered his blade, sprang at the foul Paynim’s throat, and cleft him in sunder through gorget and vant brace.
All the followers of the young knight were fired in like manner, and like avenging angels before whom no mere flesh and blood could possibly stand for a moment, they hewed their gory way through the masses of the heathen, halting not until the last of their foes had gasped out into the darkness of eternal night his guilty soul.
And as it was in the heart of the citadel, so it had been on the battlements, not one heathen had survived his footing upon those sacred walls. And as it appeared that the whole force had devoted themselves to death in default of victory there was not one left alive.
So that the great fight ceased with the death of the last invader, and the blessed sun rose upon a scene of carnage such as even these blood-stained islands had never before witnessed. But in the hour of victory there arose a great cry. Raimondo the gallant commandant was missing. His devoted friends rushed hither and thither in the pearly light of the new day, seeking him where the heaps of dead lay thickest, but for a long time their search was in vain. At last he was found before the manger in the church, lying with face hidden on the bosom of his beloved, whose cold mangled body was clutched in an unreleasable embrace. He was to all human sight unwounded, but even the most ignorant and callous of his command knew that he had died of a broken heart.
Yet it must be believed that he went gladly to join his beloved one, knowing full well that as a gallant soldier of the Cross he had nobly sustained his high part, and only when his duty was done had he permitted himself to sink into eternal rest in the arms of her whom he had so fondly loved.
DEEP-SEA FISH
Among shore-dwellers generally there obtains an idea that the ocean, except in the immediate vicinity of land, is an awful solitude, its vast emptiness closely akin to the spaces above. But while admitting fully that there is little room for wonder at such a speculative opinion, it must be said that nothing could well be farther from the truth. Indeed, we may even go beyond that statement, and declare that the fruitful earth, with its unimaginable variety and innumerable hosts of living things, is, when compared to the densely populated world of waters, but a sparsely peopled desert. A little knowledge of the conditions existing at great depths, may well make us doubt whether any forms of life exist able to endure the incalculable pressure of the superincumbent sea; but leaving all the tremendous area of the ocean bed below 200 fathoms out of the question, there still remains ample room and verge enough for the justification of the statement just made.
Nothing has ever excited the wonder and admiration of naturalists more than this prodigious population of the sea—these unthinkable myriads of hungry things which are shut up to the necessity of preying upon each other since other forms of food do not exist. The mind recoils dismayed from a contemplation of their countlessness, as it does from the thought of timelessness or the extent of the stellar spaces, shrinkingly admitting its limitations and seeking relief in some subject that is within its grasp. But without touching upon the lower forms of life peopling the sea, and so escaping the burden of thought which the slightest consideration of their myriads entail, it is possible to note, without weariness, how, all over the waste spaces of a remote and unhearing ocean, fish of noble proportions and varying degrees of edibility disport themselves, breeding none know where, and revealing their beauties to the passing seafarer as they gather companionably around his solitary keel. Excluding all the varied species of mammals that form such an immense portion of the sea-folk, it may roughly be said that the majority of deep-sea fish belong to the mackerel family, or Scombridæ. They possess, in an exaggerated form, all the characteristics of that well-known edible fish that occasionally gluts our markets and gladdens the hearts of our fishermen.
One of the least numerous, but from his size and prowess probably the monarch of all sea fish, is the sword-fish, Xiphias. This elegant fish attains an enormous size, specimens having been caught weighing over a quarter of a ton; but owing to the incomparable grace of its form, its speed and agility are beyond belief. It is often—in fact, generally—confounded with the “saw-fish,” a species of shark; the principal reason of this confusion being the great number of “saws” or beaks of the latter, which are to be found in homes about the country. Yet between the sword of the Xiphias and the “saw” of the Pristiophoridæ there is about as much similarity as there is between the assegai of a Zulu and the waddy of a black-fellow. The one weapon is a slender, finely pointed shaft of the hardest bone, an extended process of the skull, about two feet long in a large specimen. Impelled by the astounding vigour of the lithe monster behind it, this tremendous weapon has been proved capable of penetrating the massive oaken timbers of a ship, and a specimen may be seen in the Museum of Natural History at South Kensington, at this present time, transfixing a section of ship’s timber several inches in thickness. The “saw,” on the other hand, is, like all the rest of a shark’s skeleton, composed of cartilage, besides being terminated at the tip by a broad, almost snout-like end. Unlike the round lance of the sword-fish, the “saw” has a flat blade set on both sides with sharp teeth with considerable gaps between them. As its name and shape would imply, it is used saw-wise, principally for disembowelling fish, for upon such soft food the saw-fish is compelled to feed owing to the shape of his mouth and the insignificance of his teeth. Thus it will be seen that apart from the radical differences between the two creatures, nothing being really in common between them, except that they are both fish, there is really no comparison possible between “saw” and “sword.” Fortunately for the less warlike inhabitants of the deep sea, sword-fish are not numerous, there are none to cope with them or keep their numbers down if they were prolific. Sometimes—strange companionship—they join forces with the killer whale and the thresher shark in an attack upon one of the larger whales, only avoiding instinctively that monarch of the boundless main, the cachalot.