While yet wondering and inactive, the trumpet of Boabdil was heard
behind; and they beheld the Moorish king, at the head of his guards,
emerging down the avenues that led to the gate. The sight restored and
exhilarated the gazers; and, when Boabdil halted in the space before the
portals, the shout of twenty thousand warriors rose ominously to the ears
of the advancing Christians.

"Men of Granada!" said Boabdil, as soon as the deep and breathless
silence had succeeded to that martial acclamation,--"the advance of the
enemy is to their destruction! In the fire of last night the hand of
Allah wrote their doom. Let us forth, each and all! We will leave our
homes unguarded--our hearts shall be their wall! True, that our numbers
are thinned by famine and by slaughter, but enough of us are yet left for
the redemption of Granada. Nor are the dead departed from us: the dead
fight with us--their souls animate our own. He who has lost a brother,
becomes twice a man. On this battle we will set all. Liberty or chains!
empire or exile! victory or death! Forward!"

He spoke, and gave the rein to his barb. It bounded forward, and cleared
the gloomy arch of the portals, and Boabdil el Chico was the first Moor
who issued from Granada, to that last and eventful field. Out, then,
poured, as a river that rushes from caverns into day, the burnished and
serried files of the Moorish cavalry. Muza came the last, closing the
array. Upon his dark and stern countenance there spoke not the ardent
enthusiasm of the sanguine king. It was locked and rigid; and the
anxieties of the last dismal weeks had thinned his cheeks, and ploughed
deep lines around the firm lips and iron jaw which bespoke the obstinate
and unconquerable resolution of his character.

As Muza now spurred forward, and, riding along the wheeling ranks,