“Roh!” said Zagloba, with uncommon irritation, “I must do something considerable, or my glory is lost through those monkeys,—would that the plague had stifled them! The whole army will ridicule me; and though there is no lack of words in my mouth, still I cannot meet the whole world. I must wipe away this confusion, or wide as this Commonwealth is they will herald me through it as king of the monkeys!”
“Uncle must wipe away this confusion!” repeated Roh, with a thundering voice.
“And the first means will be that, as I have captured the Kazanovski Palace,—for let any one say that it was not I who did it—”
“Let any one say that it was not Uncle who did it!” repeated Roh.
“I will capture that church, so help me the Lord God, amen!” concluded Zagloba.
Then he turned to his attendants who were there at the guns,—
“Fire!”
Fear seized the Swedes, who were defending themselves with despair in the church, when the whole side wall began on a sudden to tremble. Bricks, rubbish, lime, fell on those who were sitting in the windows, at the port-holes, on the fragments of the inside cornices, at the pigeon-holes, through which they were firing at the besiegers. A terrible dust rose in the house of God, and mixed with the smoke began to stifle the wearied men. One man could not see another in the darkness. Cries of “I am suffocating, I am suffocating!” still increased the terror. The noise of balls falling through the windows, of leaden lattice falling to the floor, the heat, the exhalations from bodies, turned the retreat of God into a hell upon earth. The frightened soldiers stood aside from entrances, windows, and port-holes. The panic is changed into frenzy. Again terrified voices call: “I am suffocating! Air! Water!” Hundreds of voices begin to roar,—
“A white flag! a white flag!”
Erskine, who is commanding, seizes the flag with his own hand to display it outside. At that moment the entrance bursts, a line of stormers rush in like an avalanche of Satans, and a slaughter follows. There is sudden silence in the church; there is heard only the beast-like panting of the strugglers, the bite of steel on bones, and on the stone floor groans, the patter of blood; and at times some voice in which there is nothing human cries, “Quarter! Quarter!” After an hour’s fighting the bell on the tower begins to thunder, and thunders, thunders,—to the victory of the Mazovians, to the funeral of the Swedes.