Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/273

 midst of the dense mass, and involved in one general and terrible conflagration their own and every vessel of the invading squadrons. The destruction of the Saracenic Armada was complete.

The fate of the Saracen army, though not quite so disastrous, was one of heavy loss and great suffering, materially increased by a severe frost which covered the ground with snow for more than one hundred days. In the spring the survivors, aided with new levies of troops from Africa, made a fresh attempt to storm the city; but, on this proving as futile as their former efforts had been, they at length withdrew, and for seven hundred years more Constantinople was spared the desecration of the Infidel flag.

of water. Sand, urine, or vinegar, were the only known applications which could damp its fury; the Greeks styled it appropriately the liquid or maritime fire. For the annoyance of the enemy, it was employed either by sea or by land, and with equal effect in battles or in sieges. Sometimes it was poured from the ramparts of a besieged city from large boilers, or launched in red-hot balls of stone or iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax or tow which had been soaked in this inflammable oil. On other occasions it was deposited in fire-ships, and thence often, by some unexplained contrivance, blown through long tubes of copper, which were planted on the bow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of liquid and consuming fire. Its composition was jealously concealed, and the Greeks terrified their enemies, not merely by the fire itself, but by the reports currently believed that its knowledge had been revealed, by an angel, to the first and greatest of the Constantines for the special use of the people of the eastern portion of the Roman empire. The secret was kept by them for more than four hundred years.]
 * [Footnote: being extinguished, was nourished and quickened on the application