against the proposal; orders were even issued to punish with death any
attempt at a parley. On the contrary, they made answer by a more lively
cannonade than before, along the whole line of ramparts and fortresses
which overhung the city. Sallies were also made at almost every hour of
the day and night on every assailable point of the Christian lines, so
that the camp was kept in perpetual alarm. In one of the nocturnal
sallies, a body of two thousand men from the castle of Gebalfaro succeeded
in surprising the quarters of the marquis of Cadiz, who, with his
followers, was exhausted by fatigue and watching, during the two preceding
nights. The Christians, bewildered with the sudden tumult which broke
their slumber, were thrown into the greatest confusion; and the marquis,
who rushed half armed from his tent, found no little difficulty in
bringing them to order, and beating off the assailants, after receiving a
wound in the arm from an arrow; while he had a still narrower escape from
the ball of an arquebus, that penetrated his buckler and hit him below the
cuirass, but fortunately so much spent as to do him no injury. [15]

The Moors were not unmindful of the importance of Malaga, or the gallantry
with which it was defended. They made several attempts to relieve it,
whose failure was less owing to the Christians than to treachery and their
own miserable feuds. A body of cavalry, which El Zagal despatched from
Guadix to throw succors into the beleaguered city, was encountered and cut
to pieces by a superior force of the young king Abdallah, who consummated
his baseness by sending an embassy to the Christian camp, charged with a
present of Arabian horses sumptuously caparisoned to Ferdinand, and of
costly silks and Oriental perfumes to the queen; at the same time
complimenting them on their successes, and soliciting the continuance of
their friendly dispositions towards himself. Ferdinand and Isabella
requited this act of humiliation by securing to Abdallah's subjects the
right of cultivating their fields in quiet, and of trafficking with the