The damsel bowed her head before this answer. She knew that it signified: "Suffer if thou wouldst prevail!"
CHAPTER XII.
THE BATTLE OF ST. GOTHARD.
It was a beautiful summer evening; there was a half-moon in the sky, and a hundred other half-moons scattered over the hillocks below. The Turkish host had encamped among the hills skirting the river Raab.
Concerning this particular new moon, we find recorded in the prophetic column of the "Kaossa Almanack" for the current year that it was to be:
"To the Germans, help in need;
To the Turks, fortune indeed;
To the Magyars, power to succeed.
And whoever's not ill
Shall of health have his fill,
For 'tis Heaven's own will."
The worthy astrologer forgot, however, to find out in heaven whether there are not certain quarters of the moon beneath which man may easily die even if they are not sick.
The great Grand Vizier Kiuprile, after resting on the ruins of Zerinvár, turned towards the borders of Styria and united with the army of the Pasha of Buda, below St. Gothard.
Kiuprile's host consisted for the most part of cavalry, for his infantry was employed in digging trenches round Zerinvár, whose commandant, in reply to an invitation to surrender the fortress and not attempt to defend it with six hundred men against thirty thousand, jestingly responded: "As one Hungarian florin is worth ten Turkish piasters, one Hungarian warrior necessarily must be worth ten Turkish warriors." And what is more, the worthy man made good this rate of exchange, for when the victors came to count up the cost, they found that for six hundred Hungarians they had had to pay six thousand Osmanlis into the hands of his Majesty King Death.
Kiuprile had then pursued the armies of the Emperor, but they refused to stand and fight anywhere; and while their enemies were marching higher and higher up the banks of the Raab, they seemed to be withdrawing farther and farther away on the opposite shore.