"The Basha is the governor's prisoner." But the strokes which were levelled at Ripperda's breast were sheathed in his son's. Before the Spaniards could check their arms, he was cut through the shoulder and stabbed in his side; but the men recoiled on finding they had wounded their leader; and in the instant, Sidi Ali mounting the height with a fresh horde of triumphant Moors, they surrounded Aben Humeya, believing the day won. But as Ali's hand planted the Ottoman standard amidst the still grappling of foe to foe, and the anathemas of the Christian against the ferocious curses of the Moor, the clouds of smoke rolled away from the eastern point of the rampart, and the golden head of the sun peered from the horizon. Its first ray shot direct upon the radiant crest of Aben Humeya, and a rifle took aim. The ball struck; and, in spite of a momentary exertion in its victim to spring forward, he staggered and fell into the arms of his followers.
A woeful yell announced to the legions below, that some direful disaster had happened. The cry was echoed from rank to rank with shrieks and howlings; and a single blast of a trumpet immediately succeeded. The breach was abandoned, as if by enchantment. The firing sunk at once into a dead calm; and the flight of the Moors through the yet hovering smoke, sounded in the darkness like the wings of many birds brushing the sands before the sweep of some coming storm.
The Queen's cabinet at Seville was employed on many projects besides that of sealing the union between Portugal and Spain. The venerable Grimaldo was just dead; and the affairs of state falling entirely into the management of the Marquis de Castellor and the Count de Paz, she affected a warm interest in the former, though she detested him in her heart, not only as the most successful rival of her regretted Ripperda, but because his talents were equal to his ambition. And what was more provoking to a despotic woman, he made her feel that he could maintain his ground by the same surreptitious art he had obtained it.
The Count de Paz was a man of a different complexion. Covetousness, and an abject dependent on individual favour, tethered his vain-glorious spirit to a boundary he panted to overleap, but everlastingly found it a limit he could not pass. This man, Isabella used as her instrument, and by his connivance, admitted a third person to their private councils, who commanded him with the invincible power of a superior demon.