Suddenly, a shepherd, who rested under a straw shed to guard the grain, seized by a mad terror at the sight of so many armed men, began to flee up the coast, screaming as loud as he could, “Help! Help!”
His cries echoed through the olive orchards.
Then it was that the Radusani increased their speed. Among the trunks of trees, amid the dried reeds, the Saint of silver tottered, gave back sonorous tinklings at the blows of the trees, became illuminated with vivid flashes at every hint of a fall. Ten, twelve, twenty shots rained down in a vibrating flash, one after another upon the group of houses. One heard creaks, then cries followed by a great clamorous commotion; several doors opened while others closed, windows fell in fragments and vases of basil fell shivered on the road. A white smoke rose placidly in the air, behind the path of the assailants, up to the celestial incandescence. All blinded, in a belligerent rage, shouted, “To death! To death!”
A group of idolaters maintained their positions around Saint Pantaleone. Atrocious vituperations against Saint Gonselvo burst out amongst the brandished scythes and sickles.
“Thief! Thief! Loafer! The candles!... The candles!”
Other groups besieged the doors of the houses with blows of hatchets. And, as the doors unhinged shattered and fell, the howling Pantaleonites burst inside, ready to kill. Half nude women fled to the corners, imploring pity and, trying to defend themselves from the blows by grasping the weapons and cutting their fingers, they rolled extended on the pavement in the midst of heaps of coverings and sheets from which oozed their flaccid turnip-fed flesh.
Giacobbe, tall, slender, flushed, a bundle of dried bones rendered formidable by passion, director of the slaughter, stopped everywhere in order to make a broad, commanding gesture above all heads with his huge scythe. He walked in the front ranks, fearless, without a hat, in the name of Saint Pantaleone. More than thirty men followed him. And all had the confused and stupid sensation of walking in the midst of fire, upon an oscillating earth, beneath a burning vault that was about to shake down upon them.
But from all sides defenders began to assemble; the Mascalicesi, strong and dark as mulattoes, sanguinary, who struck with long unyielding knives, and tore the stomach and throat, accompanying each blow with guttural cries. The fray drew little by little toward the church, from the roofs of two or three houses burst flames, a horde of women and children escaped precipitately among the olives, seized with panic and no longer with light in their eyes.
Then among the men, without the handicap of the women’s tears and laments, the hand-to-hand struggle grew more ferocious. Beneath the rust-coloured sky the earth was covered with corpses. Vituperations, choked within the teeth of the slain, resounded, and ever above the clamour continued the shout of the Radusani, “The candles! The candles!”
But the entrance of the church was barred by an enormous door of oak studded with nails. The Mascalicesi defended it from the blows and hatchets. The Saint of silver, impassive and white, oscillated in the thick of the fray, still sustained upon the shoulders of the four Hercules, who, although bleeding from head to foot, refused to give up. The supreme vow of the attackers was to place the idol on the altar of the enemy.