Malacarne seconded him, declaring that he too would go and be shot down. "And then," he said, "you can hunt up a leader and do what you choose." There was no further hesitation, and such men know no middle course between discouragement and unbridled frenzy. Fra Angelo had no sooner seen them start forward than he exclaimed: "The Piccinino is saved!" Michel was amazed that he could place so much confidence in courage that was so weak-kneed a moment before; but he soon found out that the Capuchin knew them better than he did.
[1]Sperlinga alone refused to do what the Sicilians wished.
[2]However ill-advised the hospitality accorded to the French by the castle of Sperlinga may have been from the standpoint of the welfare of the country, it was admirable in its persistence and self-sacrificing spirit. Refugees and defenders died of hunger in the fortress rather than surrender.
LI
CATASTROPHE
The fortress of Sperlinga, formerly considered impregnable, was at this time nothing more than a majestic ruin, incapable of being defended. The town, or more properly the hamlet, below it, was inhabited by a few wretched creatures wasted by fever and poverty. Fortress and village were perched upon a cliff of grayish sandstone, and the upper works of the fortress were hollowed out of the rock.
The besiegers climbed the cliff on the side farthest from the village. It seemed inaccessible; but the brigands were so well used to assaults of that sort that they were very soon under the walls of the fort. Half of them, under Malacarne, climbed still higher, and posted themselves in an abandoned bastion on the highest point of the mountain. This crenelated bastion afforded a safe position from which to fire down almost perpendicularly upon the castle. It was agreed that Fra Angelo and his men should station themselves at the entrance to the fortress, where there was only a huge, worm-eaten, disjointed gate, which it was not considered necessary to destroy, as that operation might take sufficient time to give the garrison an opportunity to organize an effective resistance. Malacarne's party was to fire on the castle from above, while Fra Angelo held himself in readiness to fall upon those who should come out. Then he would pretend to retreat, and, while they pursued him, Malacarne would come down, attack the enemy in the rear, and place him between two fires.
The little garrison temporarily quartered in the castle consisted of about thirty men, a larger number than the assailants anticipated, the reinforcements from Castro-Giovanni having arrived secretly at nightfall and climbed up the road, or rather the staircase, from the village, unseen by the bandits who were busily occupied in making their preparations and taking great pains to keep out of sight. That part of the escort which had kept watch throughout the preceding night was sleeping, wrapped in their cloaks, on the floors of the great dismantled halls. The late arrivals had lighted an enormous fire of fir branches in the courtyard, and were playing mora to keep awake.
The prisoners occupied the great square tower: Verbum Caro, exhausted and gasping for breath, stretched on a pile of rushes; the Piccinino, gloomy but calm, sitting on a stone bench, much wider awake than his keepers. He had heard a little bird whistling in the ravine, and had recognized that designedly inaccurate melody as a signal from Malacarne. He was patiently rubbing against a projecting stone the cord with which his hands were bound.
The officer in command of the campieri was seated on the only chair in an adjoining room, with his elbows resting on the only table in the castle, which he had obtained by requisitioning it in the village. He was an energetic, surly young man, accustomed to keep his temper at the boiling point by the constant use of wine and tobacco, having to fight against a lingering remnant of love for his country and hatred of the Swiss. He had not slept an hour since the Piccinino was placed in his custody, so that he was literally falling under the assaults of drowsiness. The lighted cigar which he held in his hand burned the ends of his fingers from time to time. Then he would rouse himself with a start, puff at his cigar, look out through a great crack in the wall in front of him to see if there were any signs of dawn, and, feeling acutely the sharpness of the air on that elevated spot, would wrap his cloak about him with a shudder, cursing the false Piccinino, who was breathing stertorously in the adjoining room, and in a moment would let his head fall forward on the table once more.
A sentinel was on guard at each end of the castle, but, whether because of fatigue or of the heedlessness that takes possession of the most disturbed mind when a dangerous situation is nearing its end, they had not detected the swift and silent approach of the brigands. A third sentinel was on duty at the isolated bastion which Malacarne was about to seize, and that circumstance came very near causing the failure of the whole plan of attack.