Page 358 - A Knight of the White Cross

was very great.

For three days after this terrible repulse the Turks were inactive, the pasha
remaining shut up in his tent, refusing to see any one, or to issue orders. At

the end of that time he roused himself from his stupor of grief and
disappointment, and, abandoning the idea of any further attack upon the
point that had cost him so dearly, he ordered the troops to move round and

renew the attack upon the wall in front of the Jews' quarter, and commence
the construction of a battery on the edge of the great ditch facing the

retrenchment behind the breach before effected. The knights of Italy and
Spain determined to seize the opportunity of retrieving the disgrace that had
fallen upon them. At night they descended into the deep cutting, carrying

across their ladders, and, silently mounting the opposite side, rushed with
loud shouts into the unfinished battery. The Turks there, taken utterly by

surprise, made but a slight resistance; a few were immediately cut down,
and the rest fled panic stricken.

The knights at once set the woodwork of the battery on fire, hurled the guns
down into the ditch, and then returned triumphantly into the town, the

dashing feat completely reinstating them in the good opinion of the grand
master and their comrades.

The incident showed the pasha that he must neglect no precautions, and,
accordingly, he commenced his works at a distance from the walls, and

pushed his approaches regularly forward until he again established a battery
on the site of that from which his troops had been so unceremoniously
ejected. While forming the approaches, the workmen had been constantly

harassed by the fire from the guns on the walls, suffering considerable loss
of life; but their numerical superiority was so vast that the loss in no way

affected the plans of the pasha.

As soon as the battery was completed, gangs of men, accustomed to mining

operations, set to work in its rear to drive sloping passages downwards,
opening into the face of the great cutting, and through these vast quantities

of earth and stones were poured, so as to afford a passage across it, the
depth being largely diminished by the great pile of rubbish that had already