to be, advanced at the head of the scum of the army, and offered to
carry out the death sentence. Ali applauded his zeal, gave him full
authority to act, and spurred his horse to the top of a neighbouring
hill, the better to enjoy the spectacle. The Christian Mirdites and the
Mohammedan guards knelt together to pray for the miserable Kardikiotes,
whose last hour had come.

The caravanserai where they were shut in was a square enclosure, open
to the sky, and intended to shelter herds of buffaloes. The prisoners
having heard nothing of what passed outside, were astonished to behold
Athanasius Vaya and his troop appearing on the top of the wall. They did
not long remain in doubt. Ali gave the signal by a pistol-shot, and a
general fusillade followed. Terrible cries echoed from the court; the
prisoners, terrified, wounded, crowded one upon another for shelter.
Some ran frantically hither and thither in this enclosure with no
shelter and no exit, until they fell, struck down by bullets. Some tried
to climb the walls, in hope of either escape or vengeance, only to be
flung back by either scimitars or muskets. It was a terrible scene of
despair and death.

After an hour of firing, a gloomy silence descended on the place, now
occupied solely by a heap of corpses. Ali forbade any burial rites on
pain of death, and placed over the gate an inscription in letters of
gold, informing posterity that six hundred Kardikiotes had there been
sacrificed to the memory of his mother Kamco.

When the shrieks of death ceased in the enclosure, they began to be
heard in the town. The assassins spread themselves through it, and
having violated the women and children, gathered them into a crowd to
be driven to Libokovo. At every halt in this frightful journey fresh