"It is here, Prince of India—the day of Destiny. Let us get ready, thou for thy revenge, I for glory and"—Irene was on his tongue, but he suppressed the name. "Call my chamberlain and equerry.... On the table there thou mayst see my arms—a mace my ancestor Ilderim [Footnote: Bajazet.] bore at Nicopolis, and thy sword of Solomon.... God is great, and the Jinn and the Stars on my side, what have we to fear?"
Within half an hour he rode out of the tent.
"Blows the wind to the city or from it?" he asked his chief Aga of Janissaries.
"Toward the city, my Lord."
"Exalted be the name of the Prophet! Set the Flower of the Faithful in order—a column of front wide as the breach in the gate—and bring the heralds. I shall be by the great gun."
Pushing his horse on the parapet, he beheld the space before him, down quite to the moat—every trace of the cemetery had disappeared—dark with hordes assembled and awaiting the signal. Satisfied, happy, he looked then toward the east. None better than he knew the stars appointed to go before the sun—their names were familiar to him—now they were his friends. At last a violet corona infinitely soft glimmered along the hill tops beyond Scutari.
"Stand out now," he cried to the five in their tabards of gold—"stand out now, and as ye hope couches in Paradise, blow—blow the stones out of their beds yonder—God was never so great!"
Then ensued the general advance which has been described, except that here, in front of St. Romain, there was no covering the assailants with slingers and archers. The fill in the ditch was nearly level with the outer bank, from which it may be described as an ascending causeway. This advantage encouraged the idea of pouring the hordesmen en masse over the hill composed of the ruins of what had been the towers of the gate.
There was an impulsive dash under incitement of a mighty drumming and trumpeting—a race, every man of the thousands engaged in it making for the causeway—a jam—a mob paralyzed by its numbers. They trampled on each other—they fought, and in the rebound were pitched in heaps down the perpendicular revetment on the right and left of the fill. Of those thus unfortunate the most remained where they fell, alive, perhaps, but none the less an increasing dump of pikes, shields, and crushed bodies; and in the roar above them, cries for help, groans, and prayers were alike unheard and unnoticed.
All this Justiniani had foreseen. Behind loose stones on top of the hill, he had collected culverins, making, in modern phrase, a masked battery, and trained the pieces to sweep the causeway; with them, as a support, he mixed archers and pikemen. On either flank, moreover, he stationed companies similarly armed, extending them to the unbroken wall, so there was not a space in the breach undefended.