After such a decision, all separated; and firing began at once. The Turks had succeeded already in putting many heavy guns in position; and their balls, passing the “breastworks,” began to fall into the town. Cannoneers in the town and the castles worked in the sweat of their foreheads the rest of the day and all night. When any one fell, there was no man to take his place, there was a lack also of men to carry balls and powder. Only before daybreak did the uproar cease somewhat. But barely was the day growing gray in the east, and the rosy gold-edged belt of dawn appearing, when in both castles the alarm was sounded. Whoso was sleeping sprang to his feet; drowsy throngs came out on the streets, listening carefully. “They are preparing for an assault,” said some to others, pointing to the side of the castle. “But is Pan Volodyovski there?” asked alarmed voices. “He is, he is!” answered others.
In the castles they rang the chapel bells, and rattling of drums was beard on all sides. In the half-light, half-darkness of morning, when the town was comparatively quiet, those voices seemed mysterious and solemn. At that moment the Turks played the “kindya;” one band gave the sounds to another, and they ran in that way, like an echo, through the whole immense tabor. The Pagan swarms began to move around the tents. At the rising day the towering intrenchments, ditches, and approaches came out of the darkness, stretching in a long line at the side of the castle. The heavy Turkish guns roared at once along its whole length; the cliffs of the Smotrych roared back in thundering echo; and the noise was as awful and terrible as if all the thunders in the storehouse of heaven had flashed and shot down together, bringing with them the dome of clouds to the earth.
That was a battle of artillery. The town and the castles gave mighty answers. Soon smoke veiled the sun and the light; the Turkish works were invisible. Kamenyets was hidden; only one gray enormous cloud was to be seen, filled in the interior with lightning, with thunder and roaring. But the Turkish guns carried farther than those of the town. Soon death began to cut people down in Kamenyets. A number of cannon were dismounted. In service at the arquebuses, two or three men fell at a time. A Franciscan Father, who was blessing the guns, had his nose and part of his lip carried off by a wedge from under a cannon; two very brave Jews who assisted in working that cannon were killed.
But the Turkish guns struck mainly at the intrenchment of the town. Pan Kazimir Humyetski sat there like a salamander, in the greatest fire and smoke: one half of his company had fallen; nearly all of those who remained were wounded. He himself lost speech and hearing; but with the aid of the Polish mayor he forced the enemy’s battery to silence, at least until new guns were brought to replace the old ones.
A day passed, a second, a third; and that dreadful “colloquium” of cannon did not cease for an instant. The Turks changed gunners four times a day; but in the town the very same men had to work all the time without sleep, almost without food, stifled from smoke; many were wounded from broken stones and fragments of cannon carriages. The soldiers endured; but the hearts began to weaken in the inhabitants. It was necessary at last to drive them with clubs to the cannon, where they fell thickly. Happily, in the evening of the third day and through the night following, from Thursday till Friday, the main cannonading was turned on the castles.
They were both covered, but especially the old one, with bombs from great mortars, which, however, “harmed little, since in darkness each bomb was discernible, and a man could avoid it.” But toward evening, when such weariness seized men that they fell off their feet from drowsiness, they perished often enough.
The little knight, Ketling, Myslishevski, and Kvasibrotski answered the Turkish fire from the castles. The starosta looked in at them repeatedly, and advanced amid a hail of bullets, anxious, but regardless of danger.
Toward evening, however, when the fire had increased still more, Pan Pototski approached Pan Michael.
“Gracious Colonel,” said he, “we shall not hold out.”
“While they confine themselves to firing we shall hold out,” answered the little knight; “but they will blow us out of here with mines, for they are making them.”