Miners from Servia were ready to burrow beneath the walls. A great cannon cast by Urban, the Dacian, who had deserted from the Christian to the Moslem camp, gaped ready to hurl its stone balls of six hundred pounds weight. It was flanked by two almost equally enormous fire-vomiting dragons, as the new artillery was called: while fourteen other batteries of lesser ordnance were waiting to pour their still novel destruction upon the works. Ancient art blended with modern science in the attack; for battering rams supplemented cannon, and trenches breast-deep completed the lines of shields. Moving forts of wood antagonized, across the deep moat, the old stone towers, which during the centuries had hurled back their assailants in more than twenty sieges. The various hosts of besiegers in their daily movements were like the folds of an enormous serpent, writhing in ever contracting circles about the body of some helpless prey. From dawn to dark the walls crumbled beneath the pounding of the artillery; but from dark to dawn they rose again under the toil of the sleepless defenders.
Thousands, impelled by the commands of the Sultan, and more, perhaps, by the prospect of reward in this world, and in another, out of which bright-eyed houris were watching their prospective lords, mounted the scaling ladders only to fill with their bodies the moat beneath. At the point of greatest danger the besieged were inspired with the courage of their Emperor, and by the aid of the bands of Italians whom the purse and the appeals of John Giustiniani had brought as the last offering of the common faith of Christendom upon the great altar already dripping with a nation's blood.
Sometimes when the Christians, whose fewness compared with the assailants compelled them to serve both day and night, were discouraged by incessant danger and fatigue, a light form in helmet and breastplate moved among them, regardless of arrows and bullets of lead: now stooping to staunch the wounds of the fallen; now mounting the parapet, where scores of stout soldiers shielded her with their bodies, and hailed her presence with the shout of "The Albanian! The Albanian!" The reverence which the soldiers gave to the devoted nuns, who were incessant in their ministry of mercy, was surpassed by that with which they regarded Morsinia. She had become in their eyes the impersonation of the cause for which they were struggling.
The interruption by the war of the negotiations with the Emir of Trebizond, whose daughter had been selected as the imperial spouse, revived the rumors which had once associated the fair Albanian's name with that of his Majesty; and gave rise to a nick-name, "the Little Empress," which, among the soldiers, came to be spoken with almost as much loyalty of personal devotion, as if it had received the imperial sanction.
Constantine's solicitude led him to remonstrate with Morsinia for the exposure of her person to the dangers of the wall: but she replied—
"Have you not said, my dear brother, that the defence is hopeless? that the city must fall? What fate then awaits me? The Turks have service for men whom they capture, which, though hard, is not damning to body and soul. What if they send you to the mines, to the galleys? What if they slay you? You can endure that. Yet I know that you yourself would perish in the fight before you would submit to even such a fate. But what is the destiny of a woman who shall fall into their hands? It is better to die than to be taken captive. And is not yonder breach where the men of the true God are giving their lives for their faith, as sacred as was ever an altar on earth? Is not the crown of martyrdom better than a living death in the harem of the infidel? The arrow that finds me there on the wall shall be to me as an angel from heaven; and a death-wound received there will be as painless to my soul as the kiss of God."
"But this must not be!" cried Constantine. "Our valor, if it does not save the city, may lead to surrender upon terms which shall save all the lives of the people."
"It is impossible," replied she. "His Majesty informed me yesterday that Mahomet had pledged to his soldiers the spoil of the city, with unlimited license to pillage."
Constantine was silent, but at length added. "If worst comes, it will then be time enough to expose your life."
"But the end is near, dear Constantine. The city is badly provisioned. The poor are already starving. The garrison is on allowance which can sustain it but a few days. Besides, as you have told me, the Italians are at feud with the Greeks, and ready to open the gates if famine presses upon them."