In that darkness gleamed discharges of musketry; but the human river rushed forward with an irresistible torrent,—the palace was captured.
At the same time they broke in through the windows, and a terrible battle with cold weapons began in the interior of the palace. Chamber was taken after chamber, corridor after corridor, story after story. The walls had been so shattered and weakened beforehand that the ceiling in many rooms fell with a crash, covering with their ruins Poles and Swedes. But the Mazovians advanced like a conflagration; they penetrated every place, overturning with their long knives, cutting and thrusting. No man of the Swedes asked for quarter, but neither was it given. In some corridors and passages the piles of bodies so blocked the way that the Swedes made barricades of them; the Poles pulled them out by the feet, by the hair, and hurled them through the windows. Blood flowed in streams through the passages. Groups of Swedes defended themselves yet here and there, and repelled with weakening hands the furious blows of the stormers. Blood had covered their faces, darkness was covering their eyes, more than one sank on his knees, and still fought; pressed on every side, suffocated by the throng of opponents, the Scandinavians died in silence, in accord with their fame, as beseemed warriors. The statues of divinities and ancient heroes, bespattered with blood, looked with lifeless eyes on that death.
Roh Kovalski raged specially in the upper stories; but Zagloba rushed with his men to the terraces, and when he had cut to pieces the infantry defending themselves there, he hurried from the terraces to those wonderful gardens which were famed throughout Europe. The trees were already cut down, the rare plants destroyed by Polish balls, the fountains broken, the earth ploughed up by bombshells,—in a word, everywhere a desert and destruction, though the Swedes had not raised their robber hands against this place, out of regard for the person of Radzeyovski. A savage struggle set in there, too; but it lasted only a short time, for the Swedes gave but feeble resistance, and were cut to pieces under the personal command of Zagloba. The soldiers dispersed now through the garden, and the whole palace was plundered.
Zagloba betook himself to a corner of the garden, to a place where the walls formed a strong “angle,” and where the sun did not come, for the knight wished to rest somewhat; and he rubbed the sweat from his heated forehead. All at once he espied some strange monsters, looking at him with hostility through an iron grating.
The cage was fixed in a corner of the wall, so that balls falling from the outside could not reach it. The door of the cage was wide open; but those meagre and ugly creatures did not think of taking advantage of this. Evidently terrified by the uproar, the whistling of bullets, and the fierce slaughter at which they had looked a moment before, they crowded into a corner of the cage, and hidden in the straw, gave note of their terror only by muttering.
“Are those monkeys or devils?” said Zagloba to himself.
Suddenly anger seized him, courage swelled in his breast, and raising his sabre he fell upon the cage.
A terrible panic was the answer to the first blow of his sabre. The monkeys, which the Swedish soldiers had treated kindly and fed from their own slender rations, fell into such a fright that madness simply seized them; and since Zagloba stopped their exit, they began to rush through the cage with unnatural springs, hanging to the sides, to the top, screaming and biting. At last one in frenzy sprang on Zagloba’s shoulder, and seizing him by the head, fastened to it with all his power; another hung to his right shoulder, a third caught him in front by the neck, the fourth hung to his long split sleeves which were tied together behind; and Zagloba, stifled, sweating, struggled in vain, in vain struck blindly toward the rear. Breath soon failed him, his eyes were standing out of his head, and he began to cry with despairing voice,—
“Gracious gentlemen! save me!”
The cry brought a number of men, who, unable to understand what was happening, rushed to his aid with blood-streaming sabres; but they halted at once in astonishment, they looked at one another, and as if under the influence of some spell they burst out in one great laugh. More soldiers ran up, a crowd was formed; but laughter was communicated to all as an epidemic. They staggered as if drunk, they held their sides; their faces, besmeared with the gore of men, were twisting spasmodically, and the more Zagloba struggled the more did they laugh. Now Roh Kovalski ran down from an upper story, scattered the crowd, and freed his uncle from the Simian embraces.