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They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate, let down the drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival of Caled, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured their conquest.
In the presence of both armies, a venerable Greek advanced from the ranks with a liberal offer of peace; and the departure of the Saracens would have been purchased by a gift to each soldier, of a turban, a robe, and a piece of gold; ten robes and a hundred pieces to their leader; one hundred robes and a thousand pieces to the caliph. A smile of indignation expressed the refusal of Caled.
In the decline, as in the infancy, of the military art, a hostile defiance was frequently offered and accepted by the generals themselves: many a lance was shivered in the plain of Damascus, and the personal prowess of Caled was signalized in the first sally of the besieged. After an obstinate combat, he had overthrown and made prisoner one of the Christian leaders, a stout and worthy antagonist.
Yet he returned from this embassy a secret proselyte; his reason or his interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he escaped from Mecca with his friend Caled; and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at the same moment the satisfaction of embracing the two firmest champions of his cause.
"No quarter," cried the rapacious and sanguinary Caled, "no quarter to the enemies of the Lord:" his trumpets sounded, and a torrent of Christian blood was poured down the streets of Damascus. When he reached the church of St.
"Advance," cried Abdallah, who stepped into the vacant place, "advance with confidence: either victory or paradise is our own." The lance of a Roman decided the alternative; but the falling standard was rescued by Caled, the proselyte of Mecca: nine swords were broken in his hand; and his valor withstood and repulsed the superior numbers of the Christians.
As the command which I received, when he was delivered to my custody, was absolute, that no foot should enter, I doubted whether the token had not been obtained, by fraud, for some other purpose; yet, as he required admittance only, I complied: but that if any treachery had been contrived, I might detect it; and that no artifice might be practised to favour an escape; I waited myself at the door, and listening to their discourse I overheard the treason that I suspected. 'What then, said ALMORAN, 'didst thou hear? 'A part of what was said, replied Caled, 'escaped me: but I heard Osmyn, like a perfidious and presumptuous slave, call ALMORAN a tyrant; I heard him profess an inviolable friendship for HAMET, and assure him of deliverance.
His troops, in three divisions, marched into the city: eight-and-twenty of the inhabitants were slain by the sword of Caled; eleven men and six women were proscribed by the sentence of Mahomet; but he blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant; and several of the most obnoxious victims were indebted for their lives to his clemency or contempt. The chiefs of the Koreish were prostrate at his feet.
As they were now likely to be involved in one common calamity, by the ruin of the prince whose party they had espoused; Caled's enmity subsided, and the indifference of Osmyn was warmed into kindness: mutual distress produced mutual confidence; and Caled, after condoling with Osmyn on their present hopeless situation, proposed that they should draw off their forces, and revolt to HAMET. This proposition Osmyn rejected, not only from principle, but from interest: 'Now we have accepted of a trust, said he, 'we ought not to betray it.
To secure this fatal secret, and put an end to his inquietude, he resolved, from the moment that ALMORAN was established upon the throne, to find some opportunity secretly to destroy Osmyn: in this resolution, he was confirmed by the enmity, which inferior minds never fail to conceive against that merit, which they cannot but envy without spirit to emulate, and by which they feel themselves disgraced without an effort to acquire equal honour; it was confirmed also by the hope which Caled had conceived, that, upon the death of Osmyn, he should succeed to his post: his apprehensions likewise were increased, by the gloom which he remarked in the countenance of Osmyn; and which not knowing that it arose from fear, he imputed to jealousy and malevolence.
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