It was no mere flattery he spoke, he meant and believed what he said.
And in his heart he thought—“If you had not been sick we had fought and died like this on the banks of the Dnieper, and not lived to see this exile.”
The King was at one of the barricaded windows, firing over the heads of his crouching soldiers who were picking off the Turks who seemed in a certain confusion, when Baron Görtz gave a sudden cry and a deep curse.
He had perceived that the Turks, ashamed at being so long kept at bay by a handful of men, were sending arrows, twisted with flaming straw, on to the roof, the doors, window-frames, and all the inflammable portions of the building. The exclamation had hardly left his lips before a great gush of flame invaded the room where the King was.
The roof, burning with a hundred flaming arrows, was falling into this upper chamber.
Karl, without a change of countenance, called two guards to help him find water.
General Dahldorf dragged along a small barrel from the stores.
With his own hands the King staved it in and hurled the contents on to the advancing flames; with a roar the fire increased so that all had to hurl themselves against the door; the perukes of the officers were singed, and arid smoke filled the eyes of all.
The barrel had been filled, not, as was thought, with water, but with brandy.
There was nothing to do but to retire into the next apartment; this was already menaced and full of smoke.