The daylight had begun to fade, as the latter drew near the enemy's encampment; and, as he was unacquainted with the ground, Mondejar resolved to postpone his attack till the following morning. The night set in dark and threatening. But a hundred watchfires blazing on the hill-tops illumined the sky, and sent a feeble radiance into the gloom of the valley. All night long the wild notes of the musical instruments peculiar to the Moors, mingling with their shrill war-cries, sounded in the ears of the Christians, keeping them under arms, and apprehensive every moment of an attack.[68] But a night attack was contrary to the usual tactics of the Moors. Nor, as it appeared, did they intend to join battle with the Spaniards at all in this place. At least, if such had been their design, they changed it. For at break of day, to the surprise of the Spaniards, no vestige was to be seen of the Moriscoes, who, abandoning their position, had taken flight, like their own birds of prey, into the depths of the mountains.

Mondejar, not sorry to be spared the delay which an encounter must have caused him at a time when every moment was so precious, now rapidly pushed forward to Orgiba, where he happily arrived in season to relieve the garrison, reduced almost to the last extremity, and to put to flight the rabble who besieged it.

In the fulness of their hearts, and with the tears streaming from their eyes, the poor prisoners came forth from their fortress to embrace the deliverers who had rescued them from the most terrible of deaths. Their apprehensions of such a fate had alone nerved their souls to so long and heroic a resistance. Yet they must have sunk ere this from famine, had it not been for their politic precaution of taking with them into the tower several of the Morisco children whose parents secretly supplied them with food, which served as the means of subsistence—scanty though it was—for the garrison. But as the latter came forth into view, their wasted forms and famine-stricken visages told a tale of woe that would have softened a heart of flint.[69]

The situation of Orgiba pointed it out as suitable for a fortified post, to cover the retreat of the army, if necessary, and to protect the convoys of supplies to be regularly forwarded from Granada. Leaving a small garrison there, the captain-general, without longer delay, resumed his pursuit of the enemy.

Aben-Humeya had retreated into Poqueira, a rugged district of the Alpujarras. Here he had posted himself, with an army amounting to more than double its former numbers, at the extremity of a dangerous defile, called the Pass of Alfajarali. Behind lay the town of Bubion, the capital of the district, in which, considering it as a place of safety, many of the wealthier Moriscoes had deposited their women and their treasures.

Mondejar's line of march now took him into the heart of the wildest regions of the Alpujarras, where the scenery assumed a character of sublimity very different from what he had met with in the lower levels of the country. Here mountain rose beyond mountain, till their hoary heads, soaring above the clouds, entered far into the region of eternal snow. The scene was as gloomy as it was grand. Instead of the wide-spreading woods that usually hang round the skirts of lofty mountains, covering up their nakedness from the eye, nothing here was to be seen but masses of shattered rock, black as if scathed by volcanic fires, and heaped one upon another in a sort of wild confusion, as if some tremendous convulsion of nature had torn the hills from their foundations, and thrown them into primitive chaos. Yet the industry of the Moriscoes had contrived to relieve the savage features of the landscape, by scooping out terraces wherever the rocky soil allowed it, and raising there the vine and other plants, in bright patches of variegated culture, that hung like a garland round the gaunt and swarthy sierra.

The temperature was now greatly changed from what the army had experienced in the valley. The wind, sweeping down the icy sides of the mountains, found its way through the harness of the cavaliers and the light covering of the soldiers, benumbing their limbs, and piercing them to the very bone. Great difficulty was experienced in dragging the cannon up the steep heights, and along roads and passes, which, however easily traversed by the light-footed mountaineer, were but ill suited to the movements of an army clad in the heavy panoply of war.

The march was conducted in perfect order, the arquebusiers occupying the van, and the cavalry riding on either flank, while detachments of infantry, the main body of which occupied the centre, were thrown out to the right and left, on the higher grounds along the route of the army, to save it from annoyance from the mountaineers.

On the thirteenth of January, Mondejar entered the narrow defile of Alfajarali, at the farther end of which the motley multitude that had gathered round the standard of Aben-Humeya were already drawn up in battle-array. His right wing rested on the bold side of the sierra; the left was defended by a deep ravine, and his position was strengthened by more than one ambuscade, for which the nature of the ground was eminently favourable.[70] Indeed, ambushes and surprises formed part of the regular strategy of the Moorish warrior, who lost heart if he failed in these,—like the lion, who, if balked in the first spring upon his prey, is said rarely to attempt another.

COMBAT AT ALFAJARALI.