At the very moment when the presumptuous wretch uttered this blasphemy, a stony substance smote his shoulder, so that his arm hung down benumbed at his side.
What was that?
Nothing but a large piece of ice, coming before the rest by way of warning. Immediately afterwards heaven discharged, as from slings, its rattling, clattering stones, jagged lumps of ice came plunging down from the sky. Some of them were like birds' eggs, others like transparent nuts, others like the heads of spiked clubs, ten little pieces all glued together, with a murderous lump in the middle of a pound's weight. The lightning flashed incessantly, sending its messages from one quarter of the heavens to the other, the ice-flogged earth in the distant plain gave forth a sound as if it were about to collapse beneath the falling sky.
"Allah Kerim! Allah Akbar!" exclaimed the freebooters, vainly flying from the pursuant hailstones, which smote them down from every side with frightful velocity. The neighing of the tortured and terrified horses made the din still more terrible, and the boldest were dismayed by the sweeping lightning flashes which plunged down among them with fiery heads, illuminating the dense body of hail which seemed to have dissolved into millions of diamonds and silver bullets in its descent from above.
"There is no deliverance save with the 'Lord God!'" howled the Turks. And off they plunged whithersoever their horses took them, some in the direction of the forest they had just quitted, where the wind-shattered trees received them, others galloped on still further, and plunged into a stream which the water-spout within an hour had swollen into a raging river. Others again, flying before the hurricane, fell right within its path, were struck down and scattered about miles away. When the tempest had passed over, Badrul Beg could only find fifty horsemen. Of these about twenty lay dead on the ground, scattered far and wide, with frightful wounds on their foreheads, twisted limbs and broken legs; in some cases horse and rider had been struck dead together, others had been so buried by the ice that only their hands appeared above the frozen mass. The whole plain presented the spectacle of a desert strewn over with stones and pebbles of different sizes, but all equally white and cold.
The sons of the Ethiopian palm desert had never seen ice before.
"Lo! what wonders befall in this earth!" said Badrul Beg, in his dismay. "Who can fight against Heaven? The God of the Magyars works miracles on their behalf! Allah defend us from the wrath of this strange god!"
Nevertheless, he was not quite certain whether Kuczuk Pasha would be inclined to believe him if he were to return with a shattered host after letting the women go. How could he believe from mere hearsay a marvel the like of which no true believer had ever heard? But he could have no surer witness than these iron trunks, which he had brought with him to hold the jewels of the captured women, if he filled them with the cold white stones slung by the celestial slings; when he saw those the Pasha must give credence even to a story bordering upon the marvellous.
So he nicely filled four large trunks right up to the brim with ice, and binding them on the backs of two horses, himself trotted after them. For the sake of greater security, he kept the keys of all the boxes himself, and sealed up their locks with sealing-wax.
It took him a couple of days to get back to Grosswardein, for he went a bit out of his way to collect together his scattered soldiers; and a sorry lot they were, with their broken limbs, battered heads, and black and blue bodies. All the time a burning sun shone down upon them from morn to eve, and the water was dripping from under the iron trunks, and exhaling in vapour from above them at the same time. On reaching Grosswardein, he appeared before Kuczuk Pasha with a broken arm and a downcast face, and told him the whole story, the very telling of which made him tremble.