CHAPTER XV
CARETTO
Ali had now only about room enough to cover his head. His enemies hadtwenty times as much, and they besieged him night and day. Thefortress on the hill of Lithanizza and the Isle of La Gulia were inKurshid's power already.
Still the old warrior did not surrender. The bombs thrown into thefortress levelled his palaces with the ground. His marble halls werereduced to rubbish heaps, his kiosks were smoking ruins, and hissplendid gardens lay buried, obliterated. Yet, for all that, Ali Pashavomited back his wrath upon the besiegers out of eighty guns, and ithappened more than once that hidden mines exploded beneath the moreforward advanced of the enemy's batteries, blowing guns and gunnersinto the air.
The defence was conducted by an Italian engineer whom Ali had enticedinto his service in his luckier days with the promise of enormoustreasures and detained ever since. This Italian's name was Caretto. Itwas his science that had made Janina so strong. The clumsy valor ofthe Turkish gunners fell to dust before the strategy of the Italianengineer. Of late Caretto was much exercised by the thought that hemight be discharged without a farthing, but discharge was now out ofthe question. If Caretto were outside the gates of Janina, then thefate of Janina would be in his hands, for every bastion, everysubterranean mine, every corner of the fortress was known to him.
Now at home in Palermo was Caretto's betrothed, who, as the daughterof a wealthy family, could only be his if he also had the command ofriches; and that was the chief reason why the youth had accepted theoffer of the tyrant of Epirus. And now tidings reached him from Sicilythat the parents of his bride were dead, and that she was awaiting himwith open arms; let him only come to her, poor fellow, even if hebrought nothing with him but the beggar's staff. And go he could not,for Ali Pasha held him fast. He had to point the guns, and send forthhissing bullets amongst the besiegers, and defend the fortress to thelast, while his beloved bride awaited him at home.
One day, as Caretto was directing the guns, a grenade fired from theheights of Lithanizza burst over his head and struck out his left eye.Caretto asked himself bitterly whether his bride would be able to lovehim with a face so disfigured. Henceforth he went about constantlywith a black bandage about his wounded face, and the besiegers calledhim "the one-eyed Giaour."
One fine morning in February Kurshid Pasha again directed a fiercefire against the fortress. The siege guns had now arrived which thearmy had used against Cassandra, and after a three hours' cannonade,the destructive effect of the new battery was patent, for the tower ofthe northern bastion lay in ruins. Ali Pasha galloped furiously up anddown the bastions, stimulating and threatening the gunners with adrawn sword in his hand. Whoever quitted his place instantly fell avictim beneath Ali's own hand. Caretto was standing nonchalantlybeside a gabion, whence he directed the fire of the most powerful ofall the batteries, each gun of which was a thirty-six pounder. Theguns of this battery discharged thirty balls each every hour.
All at once the battery stopped firing.
Transported with rage, Ali Pasha at once came galloping up to Caretto.
"Why don't you go on firing?" he cried.
"Because it is impossible," replied the engineer, coolly folding hisarms.
"Why is it impossible," thundered the pasha, his whole body convulsedwith rage, which the coolness of the Italian raised to fever heat.
"Because the guns are red-hot from incessant firing."
"Then throw water upon them!" cried Ali, and with that he dismountedfrom his horse.
Caretto, for the life of him, could not help laughing at thissenseless command. Whereupon Tepelenti suddenly leaped upon him andstruck him in the face, so that his cap flew far away, right off thebastion. He had struck Caretto on the very spot where Kurshid Pasha'sgrenade had lacerated his face a few weeks before.
The Italian readjusted over his eye the bandage, which had beenknocked all awry by the blow, and observed, with a cold affectation ofmirth:
"You did well, sir, to strike my face on the spot where one eye hadbeen knocked out already, for if you had struck me on the other sideyou might have knocked out the other eye also, and then how could Ihave pointed your guns?"
Ali, however, pretended to take no notice, but directed that the gunsshould be douched with cold water and then reloaded; he himself firedthe first. The cannon the same instant burst in two and smashed theleg of a cannonier standing close to it.
"It does not matter," cried Ali; "load the others, too."
When the second cannon also burst he dashed the match to the ground,threw himself on his horse, and galloped off, quivering in every nerveas if shaken by an ague.
The Italian, however, with the utmost _sang-froid_, ordered that theexploded cannons should be removed and fresh ones fetched from thearsenal and put in their places, and set them in position amidst ashower of bullets from the besiegers. When the battery was ready theenemy withdrew their siege guns, and till the next day not anothershot was fired against Janina.
Tepelenti was well aware that he had mortally offended Caretto, and hehad learned to know men (especially Italians) only too well to imaginefor an instant that Caretto, for all his jocoseness on the occasion,would ever forget that cowardly and ungrateful blow. For, indeed, itwas an act of the vilest ingratitude. What! to strike the wound whichthe man had received on his account! To strike a European officer inthe face! Ali was well aware that such a thing could never bepardoned.
The same night he sent for two gunners and ordered them not to losesight of Caretto for an instant, and if he attempted to escape toshoot him down there and then.
Next day Caretto was unusually good-humored. Early in the morning hewent out upon the ramparts, which were then covered with freshlyfallen snow. The winter seemed to be pouring forth its last venom, andthe large flakes fell so thickly that one could not see twenty pacesin advance.
"This is just the weather for an assault," said Caretto in a loudvoice to the Turks standing around him; "in such wild weather onecannot see the enemy till he stands beneath the very ramparts. I willbe so bold as to maintain that Kurshid's bands are likely to stealupon us under cover of this thick snow-storm. I should like to fire arandom shot from the ramparts to let them know we are awake."
Many thought his anxiety just. Ali Pasha was also there, and he saidnothing either for or against the proposal.
Caretto hoisted a cannon to the level of the ramparts of Lithanizzaand fastened a long chain to the gun whereby his group of Albanianscould raise and lower it.
"Leave the chain upon it," said Caretto, "for we may have to turn itin another direction."
Nevertheless it was in a good position already. Caretto calculated hisdistances with his astrolabe, then pointed the gun and ordered it tobe loaded.
The two gunners whom Ali had set to watch him never took their eyesoff the Italian; both of them had loaded pistols in their hands.Caretto did not seem to observe that they were watching him; he mighthave thought that they were there to help him.
The gun had to be turned now to the right and now to the left.Caretto himself took aim, but the clumsy Albanians kept on pushing theheavy laffette either a little too much on this side or a little toomuch on that, till at last he cried to the two watchers behind him:
"Just lend a hand and help these blockheads!" They stoopedmechanically to raise the laffette. "Enough!" cried the Italian, andwith that he put his hand on the touch-hole. "Now fire!" he cried tothe artilleryman, at the same time removing his hand.
The match descended, there was a thunderous report, and the sameinstant Caretto seized the chain wound round the wheel of the cannon,and, lowering himself from the ramparts, glided down the chain.
The watchers, with the double velocity of rage and fear, rushed to thebreastwork of the ramparts. Caretto had got to the end of the chainand was grasping it with both hands; below him yawned a depth ofthirty feet. The chain was not long enough, and there he was suspendedbetween two deaths.
"Come back," cried the watchers, aiming their pist
ols at his head, "orwe will shoot you through and through!"
Caretto cast a wild glance upward, the bandage fell from his bloodyeye, and he looked at them with the dying fury of a desperatelywounded wild beast. Then suddenly he kicked himself clear of the wallby a sharp movement of his foot, and describing the arc of a circle,he plunged into the depth beneath him like a rebounding bullet. TheAlbanians fired after him, but neither of them hit him. Below, at thefoot of the bastion, the daring Italian lay motionless for a moment,but then he quickly rose to his feet and began to clamber up the otherside of the ditch. He could only make use of one arm, for the otherhad been dislocated in his fall. Straining all his might, he struggledup; a whole shower of bullets pursued him and whistled about his head,but not one of them hit him, for the heavy snowfall made it difficultto take aim. At last he reached the top of the opposite side of thetrench, and then he turned round and shook his fist at the devastatingfortress, and disappeared in a heavy snow-drift. The gunners kept onfiring after him at random for some time.
Ali Pasha turned pale and almost fell from his horse when the tidingsreached him that Caretto had escaped.
"It is all over now!" cried he in despair, broke his sword in two, andshut himself up in the red tower. In the outer court-yard they saw himno more.
Ali knew for certain that with the departure of Caretto the lastremains of his power had vanished; his stronghold and its resourceswere hopelessly ruined if any one revealed their secrets to hisenemies outside. Caretto knew everything, and "the one-eyed Giaour"was received with great triumph in the camp of Kurshid Pasha. The nextday Ali Pasha had bitter experience of the fact that the hand whichhad hitherto defended him was now turned against him. Within ninehours a battery, constructed by Caretto, had made a breach thirtyfathoms wide in the outworks of Janina; the other cannons of thebesiegers were set up in places whither Ali's mines did not extend,and when he made new ones they were immediately rendered inoperativeby countermining, and at last Caretto discovered the net-work ofhidden tunnels at the head of the bridge, although they had beencarefully buried, and after a savage struggle forced his way throughthem into the fortress. The Albanians fought desperately, but Ali'senemies, who could afford to shed their blood freely, forced their waythrough and planted their scaling-ladders against the side of thefortress opposite the island, and where the _debris_ of thebattered-down wall filled up the ditch they crossed over and occupiedthe breach. In the evening, after a fierce combat in the court-yard,Tepelenti's forces were cut to pieces one by one, and he himself, withseventy survivors, took refuge in the red tower.
So only the red tower now remained to him.