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Other trenches were digged round the city and from the suburbs to the royal camp, so as to cut off all communication with the surrounding country. Bodies of troops were also sent to take possession of the mountain-passes by which the supplies for the army had to be brought.
They then began their march a little after midnight, so that soon after daybreak they reached the first of the Karduchian mountain-passes, which they found undefended.
The cultivators went out to their daily work with the gun slung across their shoulders and the cutlass in their belt: the hills were crested with forts, and the mountain-passes were watched by scouts. The troops were frequently reviewed in the squares of the towns, and news was perpetually arriving of a skirmish here or there.
So they went down the mountain-passes, and before sunset were gotten into the plain; but they made no stay for nightfall, save to eat a morsel and drink a draught, going through the night as men who knew their way well.
While all Andalusia was thus in arms and pouring its chivalry through the mountain-passes of the Moorish frontiers, the garrison of Alhama was reduced to great extremity and in danger of sinking under its sufferings before the promised succor could arrive.
Hatton himself ventured down to examine the water-barrels, and found not more than half a barrel of dirty, brackish, ill-flavored fluid in all. The darkness grew black and impenetrable. Heavy clouds overspread the heavens, and a moaning wind crept out of the mountain-passes of the Big Horn range and came sweeping down across the treeless prairie.
Of course, one must not betray one's brothers, but then...who are one's brothers? They placed watches in the mountains, in the forests, on the fields; they even drove people into the mountain-passes and told them to hold out at any cost. Yakob had been sitting in the chimney-corner in the straw and dust, covered with his frozen rags.
Wearied with the long night-march, borne down by insupportable heat, stretched in a long straggling line through mountain-passes, the commander of the van severely wounded at the first discharge, they themselves separated, without chiefs, and surrounded by enemies, the French troops recoiled; when Duvivier, seeing the peril that menaced the army, advanced with his battalion.
"'Alas, alas, no help can reach us now! moaned Sara, clasping her babe closer to her breast, 'no troops can march over our fearful mountain-passes in this terrific storm and thick darkness. We must die!
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