"I rode on till night, meeting n.o.body, friend or foe--on through a wide district, lately inhabited, now a wilderness. The creatures of the Sultan had pa.s.sed through it, and there was fire in their breath. We discovered a dried-up stream, and by sinking in its bed obtained water for our horses. There, in a hollow, we spent the night.... Next morning, after an hour"s ride, we met a train of carts drawn by oxen. The groaning and creaking of the distraught wheels warned me of the encounter before the advance guard of mounted men, quite a thousand strong, were in view. I did not draw rein"--
"What!" cried Justiniani, astonished. "With but a company of nine?"
The Count smiled.
"I crave your pardon, gallant Captain. In my camp the night before, I prepared my Berbers for the meeting."
"By the bones of the saints, Count Corti, thou dost confuse me the more!
With such odds against thee, what preparations were at thy command?"
""There was never amulet like a grain of wit in a purse under thy cap."
Good Captain, the saying is not worse of having proceeded from a Persian. I told my followers we were likely at any moment to be overtaken by a force too strong for us to fight; but instead of running away, we must meet them heartily, as friends enlisted in the same cause; and if they asked whence we were, we must be sure of agreement in our reply. I was to be a Turk; they, Egyptians from west of the Nile. We had come in by the new fortress opposite the White Castle, and were going to the mighty Lord Mahommed in Adrianople. Beyond that, I bade them be silent, leaving the entertainment of words to me."
The Emperor and Justiniani laughed, but Notaras asked: "If thy Berbers are Mohammedans, as thou sayest, Count Corti, how canst thou rely on them against Mohammedans?"
"My Lord the High Admiral may not have heard of the law by which, if one Arab kills another, the relatives of the dead man are bound to kill him, unless there be composition. So I had merely to remind Hadifah and his companions of the Turks we slew in the field near Basch-Kegan."
Corti continued: "After parley with the captain of the advance guard, I was allowed to ride on; and coming to the train, I found the carts freighted with military engines and tools for digging trenches and fortifying camps. There were hundreds of them, and the drivers were a mult.i.tude. Indeed, Your Majesty, from head to foot the caravan was miles in reach, its flanks well guarded by groups of hors.e.m.e.n at convenient intervals."
This statement excited the three counsellors.
"After pa.s.sing the train," the Count was at length permitted to resume, "my way was through bodies of troops continuously--all irregulars. It must have been about three o"clock in the afternoon when I came upon the most surprising sight. Much I doubt if ever the n.o.ble Captain Justiniani, with all his experience, can recall anything like it.
"First there was a great company of pioneers with tools for grading the hills and levelling the road; then on a four-wheeled carriage two men stood beating a drum; their sticks looked like the enlarged end of a galley oar. The drum responded to their blows in rumbles like dull thunder from distant clouds. While I sat wondering why they beat it, there came up next sixty oxen yoked in pairs. Your Majesty can in fancy measure the s.p.a.ce they covered. On the right and left of each yoke strode drivers with sharpened goads, and their yelling harmonized curiously with the thunder of the drum. The straining of the brutes was pitiful to behold. And while I wondered yet more, a log of bronze was drawn toward me big at one end as the trunk of a great plane tree, and so long that thirty carts chained together as one wagon, were required to support it laid lengthwise; and to steady the piece on its rolling bed, two hundred and fifty stout laborers kept pace with it unremittingly watchful. The movement was tedious, but at last I saw"--
"A cannon!" exclaimed the Genoese.
"Yes, n.o.ble Captain, the gun said to be the largest ever cast."
"Didst thou see any of the b.a.l.l.s?"
"Other carts followed directly loaded with gray limestones chiselled round; and to my inquiry what the stones were for, I was told they were bullets twelve spans in circ.u.mference, and that the charge of powder used would cast them a mile."
The inquisitors gazed at each other mutely, and their thoughts may be gathered from the action of the Emperor. He touched a bell on a table, and to Phranza, who answered the call, he said: "Lord Chamberlain, have two men well skilled in the construction of walls report to me in the morning. There is work for them which they must set about at once. I will furnish the money." [Footnote: Before the siege by the Turks, two monks, Manuel Giagari and Neophytus of Rhodes, were charged with repairing the walls, but they buried the sums intrusted to them for these works; and in the pillage of the city seventy thousand pieces of gold thus advanced by the Emperor were unearthed.--VON HAMMER, Vol. II., p. 417.]
"I have but little more of importance to engage Your Majesty"s attention.... Behind the monster cannon, two others somewhat smaller were brought up in the same careful manner. I counted seventeen pieces all bra.s.s, the least of them exceeding in workmanship and power the best in the Hippodrome."
"Were there more?" Justiniani asked.
"Many more, brave Captain, but ancient, and unworthy mention.... The day was done when, by sharp riding, I gained the rear of the train. At sunrise on the third day, I set out in return.... I have a prisoner whom this august council may examine with profit. He will, at least, confirm my report."
"Who is he?"
"The captain of the advance guard."
"How came you by him?"
"Your Majesty, I induced him to ride a little way with me, and at a convenient time gave his bridle rein to Hadifah. In his boyhood the Sheik was trained to leading camels, and he a.s.sures me it is much easier to lead a horse."
The sally served to lighten the sombre character of the Count"s report, and in the midst of the merriment, he was dismissed. The prisoner was then brought in, and put to question; next day the final preparation for the reception of Mahommed was begun.
With a care equal to the importance of the business, Constantine divided the walls into sections, beginning on the landward side of the Golden Gate or Seven Towers, and ending at the Cynegion. Of the harbor front he made one division, with the Grand Gate of Blacherne and the Acropolis or Point Serail for termini; from Point Serail to the Seven Towers he stationed patrols and lookouts, thinking the sea and rocks sufficient to discourage a.s.sault in that quarter.
His next care was the designation of commandants of the several divisions. The individuals thus honored have been already mentioned; though it may be well to add how the Papal Legate, Cardinal Isidore, doffing his frock and donning armor, voluntarily accepted chief direction along the harbor--an example of martial gallantry which ought to have shamed the lukewarm Greeks morosely skulking in their cells.
Shrewdly antic.i.p.ating a concentration of effort against the Gate St.
Romain, and its two auxiliary towers, Bagdad and St. Romain, the former on the right hand and the latter on the left, he a.s.signed Justiniani to its defence.
Upon the walls, and in the towers numerously garnishing them, the gallant Emperor next brought up his guns and machines, with profuse supplies of missiles.
Then, after flooding the immense ditch, he held a review in the Hippodrome, whence the several detachments marched to their stations.
Riding with his captains, and viewing the walls, now gay with banners and warlike tricking, Constantine took heart, and told how Amurath, the peerless warrior, had dashed his Janissaries against them, and rued the day.
"Is this boy Mahommed greater than his father?" he asked.
"G.o.d knows," Isidore responded, crossing himself breast and forehead.
And well content, the cavalcade repa.s.sed the ponderous Gate St. Romain.
All that could be done had been done. There was nothing more but to wait.
CHAPTER VI
MAHOMMED AT THE GATE ST. ROMAIN
In the city April seemed to have borrowed from the delays of Mahommed; never month so slow in coming. At last, however, its first day, dulled by a sky all clouds, and with winds from the Balkans.
The inertness of the young Sultan was not from want of will or zeal. It took two months to drag his guns from Adrianople; but with them the army moved, and as it moved it took possession, or rather covered the land.
At length, he too arrived, bringing, as it were, the month with him; and then he lost no more time.
About five miles from the walls on the south or landward side, he drew his hordes together in the likeness of a line of battle, and at a trumpet call they advanced in three bodies simultaneously. So a tidal wave, far extending, broken, noisy, terrible, rises out of the deep, and rolls upon a sh.o.r.e of stony cliffs.
Near ten o"clock in the forenoon of the sixth of April the Emperor mounted the roof of the tower of St. Romain, mentioned as at the left of the gate bearing the same name. There were with him Justiniani, the Cardinal Isidore, John Grant, Phranza, Theophilus Palaeologus, Duke Notaras, and a number of inferior persons native and foreign. He had come to see all there was to be seen of the Turks going into position.
The day was spring-like, with just enough breeze to blow the mists away.
The reader must think of the roof as an immense platform accessible by means of a wooden stairway in the interior of the tower, and battlemented on the four sides, the merlons of stone in ma.s.sive blocks, and of a height to protect a tall man, the embrasures requiring banquettes to make them serviceable. In arrangement somewhat like a ship"s battery, there are stoutly framed arbalists and mangonels on the platform, and behind them, with convenient s.p.a.ces between, arquebuses on tripods, c.u.mbrous catapults, and small cannon on high axles ready for wheeling into position between the merlons. Near each machine its munitions lie in order. Leaning against the walls there are also spears, javelins, and long and cross bows; while over the corner next the gate floats an imperial standard, its white field emblazoned with the immemorial Greek cross in gold. The defenders of the tower are present; and as they are mostly Byzantines, their att.i.tudes betray much more than cold military respect, for they are receiving the Emperor, whom they have been taught to regard worshipfully.
They study him, and take not a little pride in observing that, clad in steel cap-a-pie, he in no wise suffers by comparison with the best of his attendants, not excepting Justiniani, the renowned Genoese captain.
Not more to see than be seen, the visor of his helmet is raised; and stealing furtive glances at his countenance, n.o.ble by nature, but just now more than ordinarily inspiring, they are better and stronger for what they read in it.
On the right and left the nearest towers obstruct the view of the walls in prolongation; but southward the country spreads before the party a campania rolling and fertile, dotted with trees scattered and in thin groves, and here and there an abandoned house. The tender green of vegetation upon the slopes reminds those long familiar with them that gra.s.s is already invading what were lately gardens and cultivated fields. Constantine makes the survey in silence, for he knows how soon even the gra.s.s must disappear. Just beyond the flooded ditch at the foot of the first or outward wall is a road, and next beyond the road a cemetery crowded with tombs and tombstones, and brown and white mausolean edifices; indeed, the chronicles run not back to a time when that marginal s.p.a.ce was unallotted to the dead. From the far skyline the eyes of the fated Emperor drop to the cemetery, and linger there.
Presently one of his suite calls out: "Hark! What sound is that?"