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Daily the smile of the Lord of the World grew more complacent, as his “table-companions” told him: “The rumour of your Eternity’s advent stupefies the miserable Hellenes. Like Atar, the Angel of Fire, your splendour glitters afar. You will enter Athens and Sparta, and no sword leave its sheath, no bow its wrapper.”
The principal courtiers now reiterated their remonstrances against proceeding; the king, however, was not to be dismayed by these portents, but continued to march forward.* * Marmol, Rebel. de los Moros, lib. 1, c. xii., fol. 14. At Loxa the army was reinforced by old Ali Atar with the chosen horsemen of his garrison and many of the bravest warriors of the border towns.
His favorite wife Morayma wept as she thought of the evils that might befall him. "Why dost thou weep, daughter of Ali Atar?" said the high-minded Ayxa: "these tears become not the daughter of a warrior nor the wife of a king. Believe me there lurks more danger for a monarch within the strong walls of a palace than within the frail curtains of a tent.
The transports of the latter on the safe return of her husband were mingled with tears, for she thought of her father, Ali Atar, who had fallen in his cause, and of her only son, who was left a hostage in the hand of the Christians. The heart of Boabdil, softened by his misfortunes, was moved by the changes in everything round him; but his mother called up his spirit.
Boabdil was inexperienced in warfare, but had a veteran counsellor in his old father-in-law; for Ali Atar knew every secret of the country, and as he prowled through it his eye ranged over the land, uniting in its glare the craft of the fox with the sanguinary ferocity of the wolf.
At the end of a long gallery they came to a great portal, which Kaflis opened, and Iskander and Nicæus for a moment supposed that they had arrived at the chief hall of the Tower of Babel, but they found the shrill din only proceeded from a large company of women, who were employed in distilling the rare atar of the jasmine flower.
Ali Atar kept the main force of the army together, and turned fiercely from time to time upon his pursuers: he was like a wolf hunted through the country he had often made desolate by his maraudings. The alarm of this invasion had reached the city of Antiquera, where were several of the cavaliers who had escaped from the carnage in the mountains of Malaga.
Ali Atar, the terror of the border, the scourge of Andalusia, was dead, but there was another veteran general, scarce inferior to him for predatory warfare. This was old Bexir, the gray and crafty alcayde of Malaga, and the people under his command were ripe for an expedition of the kind.
As he had hated and warred upon the Christians all his life, so he died in the very act of bitter hostility. * Cura de los Palacios. The fall of Ali Atar put an end to the transient stand of the cavalry. Horse and foot mingled together in the desperate struggle across the Xenil, and many were trampled down and perished beneath the waves.
The fierce old Ali Atar, losing all patience, had made an assault upon the town and stormed like a fury at the gate, but had been repulsed. Another and more serious attack was expected in the course of the night.
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