ambush, while three hundred men were despatched to scale the walls
and get possession of the castle. They were picked men, many of
them alcaydes and officers, men who preferred death to dishonor.
This gallant band was guided by the escalador Ortega de Prado at the
head of thirty men with scaling-ladders. They clambered the ascent
to the castle in silence, and arrived under the dark shadow of its
towers without being discovered. Not a light was to be seen, not a
sound to be heard; the whole place was wrapped in profound repose.

Fixing their ladders, they ascended cautiously and with noiseless
steps. Ortega was the first that mounted upon the battlements,
followed by one Martin Galindo, a youthful esquire full of spirit
and eager for distinction. Moving stealthily along the parapet to
the portal of the citadel, they came upon the sentinel by surprise.
Ortega seized him by the throat, brandished a dagger before his
eyes, and ordered him to point the way to the guard-room. The
infidel obeyed, and was instantly despatched, to prevent his giving
an alarm. The guard-room was a scene rather of massacre than
combat. Some of the soldiery were killed while sleeping, others
were cut down almost without resistance, bewildered by so unexpected
an assault: all were despatched, for the scaling party was too small
to make prisoners or to spare. The alarm spread throughout the
castle, but by this time the three hundred picked men had mounted
the battlements. The garrison, startled from sleep, found the enemy
already masters of the towers. Some of the Moors were cut down at
once, others fought desperately from room to room, and the whole
castle resounded with the clash of arms, the cries of the combatants,
and the groans of the wounded. The army in ambush, finding by
the uproar that the castle was surprised, now rushed from their
concealment, and approached the walls with loud shouts and sound