“Fire away, fire away! Where is your greatest gun now?”
CHAPTER V.
The bursting of the gigantic culverin had really a crushing effect upon Miller, for all his hopes had rested hitherto on that gun. Infantry were ready for the assault, ladders and piles of fascines were collected; but now it was necessary to abandon all thought of a storm.
The plan of blowing up the cloister by means of mines came also to nothing. Miners brought in previously from Olkush split, it is true, the rock, and approached on a diagonal to the cloister; but work progressed slowly. The workmen, in spite of every precaution, fell frequently from the guns of the church, and labored unwillingly. Many of them preferred to die rather than aid in the destruction of a sacred place.
Miller felt a daily increasing opposition. The frost took away the remnant of courage from his unwilling troops, among whom terror was spreading from day to day with a belief that the capture of the cloister did not lie within human power.
Finally Miller himself began to lose hope, and after the bursting of the gun he was simply in despair; a feeling of helplessness and impotence took possession of him. Next morning he called a council, but he called it with the secret wish to hear from officers encouragement to abandon the fortress.
They began to assemble, all wearied and gloomy. In silence they took their places around a table in an enormous and cold room, in which the steam from their breaths stood before their faces, and they looked from behind it as from behind a cloud. Each one felt in his soul exhaustion and weariness; each one said to himself: “There is no counsel to give save one, which it is better for no man to be the first to give.” All waited for what Miller would say. He ordered first of all to bring plenty of heated wine, hoping that under the influence of warm drink it would be easier to obtain a real thought from those silent figures, and encouragement to retreat from the fortress.
At last, when he supposed that the wine had produced its effect, he spoke in the following words—
“Have you noticed, gentlemen, that none of the Polish colonels have come to this council, though I summoned them all?”
“It is known of course to your worthiness that servants of the Polish squadron have, while fishing, found silver belonging to the cloister, and that they fought for it with our soldiers. More than ten men have been cut down.”