On entering the fortress he fully understood how necessary was all this silence in gaining the shore. Count de Blas the governor, informed the Marquis Santa Cruz, that the Moors were in great force before the town. That several skirmishes had taken place between the corps of observation from the garrison, and the advanced posts of the Moresco camp. The Spaniards had been beaten in with loss; and in short, so universal a panic prevailed in the garrison, no confidence could be put in its steadiness in case of an attack. The consequence was already seen, in the audacity with which Aben Humeya was opening his trenches; and until Santa Cruz arrived, De Blas was in nightly dread of an attempt being made to storm the town. To prevent this, he suggested the advantage of the new troops surprising the Moors by an immediate sally.
Prior to Aben Humeya having taken up this position, the Count continued to say, he had reduced the whole of the rebellious Bashas to the obedience of their Emperor. Their leader Muley Hamet, had extended his flight from the hilly country, to the deserts of Taffilet; and Abdallah, that very morning, had sent a deputation of his royal brothers to invest Aben Humeya, with the dignity of Basha of Tetuan; and to present him with a new banner, on which was embroidered:--
"_Proceed! to exceed is no longer possible!_"
Santa Cruz replied to the urgency of de Blas for an immediate attack, that he had orders from his sovereign to act with peculiar circumspection. He must communicate with the Moorish general; and to do this with the necessary knowledge, he must have time to make his military observations, and to estimate their relative strength.
In the course of these investigations, in the prosecution of which Santa Cruz was always attended by Louis, the group of observation mounted on a redoubt far to the front in the Spanish lines. The Marquis contemplated with his glass the order, and scientific precision with which the enemy's works were advancing. The Count de Blas stood near him, and expatiated with much heat, on the probable effects of the new discipline introduced into the Moorish army by its present chief.
"But these European tactics" cried he, "are engrafted on a true barbarian soil. One flag of truce, that I ventured to dispatch merely to gain time, was fired on in its return; and in attempting to make good its retreat, a party of the enemy rushed from behind yon epaulement to the left, and took the whole troop to a man. One who made his escape, informed me, the proud Aben Humeya chose to take offence at some want of official reverence in the Spanish officer's manner of quitting the camp; and that the moment he was told of it, he ordered him to be pursued and taken; and at the same time denounced a similar fate on all who should henceforward presume to bear any Spanish flag within reach of his lines."