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Fourteen ditches lined with sword-blades and poisoned chevaux-de- frise, fourteen walls bristling with innumerable artillery and as smooth as looking-glasses, were in turn triumphantly passed by that enterprising officer. His course was to be traced by the heaps of slaughtered enemies lying thick upon the platforms; and alas! by the corpses of most of the gallant men who followed him!
Far below them as hell from heaven surges a lake of blood, in which souls float. The shores of this lake are precipices studded with sword-blades thickly set as teeth in the jaws of a shark; and demons are driving naked ghosts up the frightful slopes.
And Ambrose laughed as he had not laughed for weeks. "But what is it, then?" "The old man is of thy calling, or something like it, Stephen, being that he maketh and tempereth sword-blades after the prime Damascene or Toledo fashion, and the familiar spirit is his little daughter." Stephen did not however look mollified. "Sword-blades! None have a right to make them save our craft.
Suddenly a ringing, swaying rush of sound burst joyously on the silence the slumbering trees awoke, their leaves moved, their dark branches quivered, and the grasses lifted up their green lilliputian sword-blades. Bells! and SUCH bells! tongues of melody that stormed the air with sweetest eloquence round, rainbow bubbles of music that burst upon the wind, and dispersed in delicate broken echoes.
The company sat facing me as I stepped it over a couple of sword-blades, and their backs were to the door. Mackenzie was humming a port-a-bheul with a North Country twang even in his nose, and I was at my last step when the door opened with no noise and a girl looked in, her eyes staring hard at me alone, and a finger on her lips for silence.
Thus, when Ronda was one of the first Moorish cities to surrender, a great merchant of the unrivalled sword-blades whose secret had been brought from Damascus, had, with all his family, been accepted gladly when he declared himself ready to submit and receive baptism.
The Arabs also dispose here of sundry commodities that have become obsolete in the north; the cast-off dresses of the mamelukes and other great men, and old sword-blades from Malta. But the busiest scene is the slave market, composed of two long ranges of sheds, one for males and another for females. These poor creatures are seated in rows, decked out for exhibition.
The rusty old lances, broken spears, and dimmed sword-blades, hanging on the walls, shadowed by the tattered remnants of battle-flags bearing the bloody marks of contests in which they had taken part, were silent but suggestive tokens of the Crusades.
Once and again the assailants rushed up the breaches, but always the sword-blades, immovable and impassable, stopped their charge, and the hissing shells and thundering powder-barrels exploded unceasingly.
Thus, when Ronda was one of the first Moorish cities to surrender, a great merchant of the unrivalled sword-blades whose secret had been brought from Damascus, had, with all his family, been accepted gladly when he declared himself ready to submit and receive baptism.