The Sultaun was speechless with rage for some moments. ‘Order on the next corps!’ he shouted at last; ‘that unworthy one shall be disgraced. Before my very eyes to behave thus! Do not stay to fire,’ he cried to its commander who came up; ‘upon them with the steel! were ye English, ye would carry the place—ye are of the true faith, will ye not fight better? Ya Karwa Owlea! Ya Baba Boodun! grant me your prayers.’
‘Let me head this attack,’ cried Kasim, for others appeared to hang back; ‘on my head and eyes be it—I will carry the place or die in the effort!’
‘Remain here!’ exclaimed the Sultaun fiercely; ‘art thou, too, rebellious? remain and shoot if thou wilt, we may need thee. Let them go whose duty it is.’
‘Jo Hookum!’ exclaimed the officer who had been addressed; ‘I will either carry it or die.’
Again the advance was made, while those in the tower kept up an incessant fire, the Sultaun himself aiming frequently; but they had now to face men emboldened by success. The division was allowed to advance nearly to the same place as the former had done; and again the fatal cannon, loaded almost to the muzzle with grape, was fired. A loud shout from the enemy followed. The execution was terrible; the survivors hesitated for a moment, then turned and fled, leaving a heap of mangled and writhing forms between them and the enemy. At this moment too, a body of men from an eminence on the flank, who had hitherto been concealed, poured in a destructive volley, which added to the terror. The retreating body met another which was hurrying on to their assistance, and the confusion became irretrievable. Blows and bayonet-thrusts were even exchanged on the narrow wall, and many a man fell wounded or maimed by the hands of his fellow-soldiers, while only the powerful could keep possession of the passage. On a sudden arose a cry of ‘The road! the road!’ and as if the means of escape were thus open, the whole, for a great distance down the wall, turned and fled.
The Sultaun saw the action; it was in vain that he tore his hair, threw his turban on the ground, raved, swore, implored the assistance of the Prophet and all the saints in one breath, and in the next wildly invoked the vengeance of Heaven upon his coward army. It was in vain that he threw himself, accompanied by Kasim and his personal attendants, into the crowd, and upon the narrow path strove to withstand the torrent which poured backwards. It was in vain that he shouted—screamed till he was hoarse: his voice was lost in the mighty hubbub, in the cries of thousands, the oaths, the groans, and rattle of musketry from behind. It was in vain that, drawing his sword in despair, he cut fiercely at, and desperately wounded, many of the fugitives, and implored those around him to do the same. He was at last overpowered, and accompanied by Kasim and a few of the strongest of his slaves, he was borne on with the crowd. No one heeded him; in the mêlée he had lost his turban, by which he was usually known, and he became undistinguishable to his soldiery from one of themselves.
Thus it was that the throwing down of the wall was interrupted; the cry from the panic-stricken multitude, re-echoed by the advancing troops, rose almost instantaneously upon the air with a deafening sound. ‘The road! the road!’ all shouted, and hurried to where they expected to have seen it completed. The narrow stream met from two opposite directions, pouring on, urged by the energy of despair from behind. The two extremes met; there was no time for thought—not a second; those who were first had hardly looked into the ditch, and seen there only a heap of stones instead of a road, and those thirty feet below them, ere, with one wild cry to Alla, they were pushed into it by those behind, whose turn was to come next. A few there were—men of desperate strength—who clung to the battlements with the tenacity of despair; a few who, drawing their swords, turned and tried to cut their way through the mass. Vain effort! force was met by force, for the danger was not perceived till the men were on the brink and were pushed over; those in the rear thought they had escaped, and no warning cry was heard, or, if heard, attended to or understood.
The multitude poured on. Ten thousand men had to pass by that place. Those who leaped, lay at the bottom, many maimed, others crushed and entangled amidst the thorny briars and thick grasses. The mass at the bottom of the ditch gradually increased; and a road arose, not of the ruins of the wall, but a mass of human bodies: those uppermost struggling in agony for life, those underneath already at rest in death—a quiet foundation for the superincumbent structure.
The Sultaun and his companions were hurried on. Kasim had a dread of what he should see—a sickening feeling, as the shrieks and imprecations which arose from that horrible spot fell upon his ear as they approached; they could do nothing however, for to turn was impossible; to leap from the walls into the midst of the enemy would have been death, for they pursued the flying army with exulting shouts, and pressed close upon the flanks and rear with their long spears. By the road there was a chance of life—a chance only—and that was clung to as a reality at that moment.
They reached the brink. ‘Way for the Sultaun! aid the Sultaun! rescue your King!’ shouted Kasim with his utmost energy, while he dealt blows right and left, as did also the others with him, to stay the crowd even for an instant. The Sultaun looked down on the horrible heap, which, wildly agitated, was heaving with the convulsions of those beneath it; he appeared to turn sick and stagger, and Kasim observed it.