“They will make an assault!” whispered Zagloba.
In fact, the Turks, hearing the explosion, imagined apparently that both castles were destroyed, the defenders partly buried in the ruins, and partly seized with fear. With that thought, they prepared for the storm. Fools! they knew not that only the Lutheran church had gone into the air. The explosion had produced no other effect than the shock; not even a gun had fallen from its carriage in the new castle. But in the intrenchments the rattle of drums grew more and more hurried. Crowds of janissaries pushed out of the intrenchments, and ran with quick steps toward the castle. Fires in the castle and in the Turkish trenches were quenched, it is true; but the night was clear, and in the light of the moon a dense mass of white caps were visible, sinking and rising in the rush, like waves stirred by wind. A number of thousands of janissaries and several hundred volunteers were running forward with rage and the hope of certain victory in their hearts; but many of them were never again to see the minarets of Stambul, the bright waters of the Bosphorus, and the dark cypresses of the cemeteries.
Pan Michael ran, like a spirit, along the walls. “Don’t fire! Wait for the word!” cried he, at every gun.
The dragoons were lying flat at the battlements, panting with rage. Silence followed; there was no sound but that of the quick tread of the janissaries, like low thunder. The nearer they came, the more certain they felt of taking both castles at a blow. Many thought that the remnant of the defenders had withdrawn to the town, and that the battlements were empty. When they had run to the fosse, they began to fill it with fascines and bundles of straw, and filled it in a twinkle. On the walls, the stillness was unbroken.
But when the first ranks stood on the stuff with which the fosse had been filled, in one of the battlement openings a pistol-shot was heard; then a shrill voice shouted,—
“Fire!”
At the same time both bulwarks, and the prolongation joining them, gleamed with a long flash of flame. The thunder of cannon, the rattle of musketry, and the shouts of the assailants were mingled. When a dart, hurled by the hand of a strong beater, sinks half its length in the belly of a bear, he rolls himself into a bundle, roars, struggles, flounders, straightens, and again rolls himself; thus precisely did the throng of janissaries and volunteers. Not one shot of the defenders was wasted. Cannon loaded with grape laid men flat as a pavement, just as a fierce wind levels standing grain with one breath. Those who attacked the extension, joining the bulwarks, found themselves under three fires, and seized with terror, became a disordered mass in the centre, falling so thickly that they formed a quivering mound. Ketling poured grapeshot from two cannon into that group; at last, when they began to flee, he closed, with a rain of lead and iron, the narrow exit between the bulwarks.
The attack was repulsed on the whole line, when the janissaries, deserting the fosse, ran, like madmen, with a howl of terror. They began in the Turkish intrenchments to hurl flaming tar buckets and torches, and burn artificial fires, making day of night, so as to illuminate the road for the fugitives, and to make pursuit difficult for a sortie.
Meanwhile Pan Michael, seeing that crowd enclosed between the bulwarks, shouted for his dragoons, and went out against them. The unfortunate Turks tried once more to escape through the exit; but Ketling covered them so terribly that he soon blocked the place with a pile of bodies as high as a wall. It remained to the living to perish; for the besieged would not take prisoners, hence they began to defend themselves desperately. Strong men collected in little groups (two, three, five), and supporting one another with their shoulders, armed with darts, battle-axes, daggers, and sabres, cut madly. Fear, terror, certainty of death, despair, was changed in them into one feeling of rage. The fever of battle seized them. Some rushed in fury single-handed on the dragoons. These were borne apart on sabres in a twinkle. That was a struggle of two furies; for the dragoons, from toil, sleeplessness, and hunger, were possessed by the anger of beasts against an enemy that they surpassed in skill in using cold weapons; hence they spread terrible disaster.
Ketling, wishing on his part to make the scene of struggle more visible, gave command to ignite tar buckets, and in the light of them could be seen irrestrainable Mazovians fighting against janissaries with sabres, dragging them by the heads and beards. The savage Lusnia raged specially, like a wild bull. At the other wing Pan Michael himself was fighting; seeing that Basia was looking at him from the walls, he surpassed himself. As when a venomous weasel breaks into grain where a swarm of mice are living, and makes terrible slaughter among them, so did the little knight rush like a spirit of destruction among the janissaries. His name was known to the besiegers already, both from previous encounters and from the narratives of Turks in Hotin. There was a general opinion that no man who met him could save himself from death; hence many a janissary of those enclosed between the bulwarks, seeing Pan Michael suddenly in front, did not even defend himself, but closing his eyes, died under the thrust of the little knight’s rapier, with the word “kismet” on his lips. Finally resistance grew weak; the remnant of the Turks rushed to that wall of bodies which barred the exit, and there they were finished.