Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/124

 besiegers and the besieged. The general in command of the attacking force, Damrémont, fell near the widening breach through which his men soon rushed into the captured city. A hand-to-hand, house-to-house conflict then raged in the narrow streets. Barricades are thrown up, defended, taken, and re-taken, until at last the Moslem forces are driven to the citadel upon the summit of the rock. Then came the scenes most pitiful of all. Scores of old men, and women with their children, in a wild endeavor to escape, swung slender ropes from the parapets of the kasbah, hoping by this means to reach the valley. But the ropes were both too slender and too short. One parted, and its parting was answered by a chorus of those screams that are never uttered by the human voice but once. The others for a time sustained their clusters of clinging, swinging victims, but one by one the hands relaxed their grasp, and presently the ropes swung lightly, idly, in the breeze. Such was the end of Moslem authority in the city of Constantine.

A HUMAN FERRY