tent was on fire. The materials fed the flame
like magic. Some of the guards had yet the courage to dash forward;
but the smoke and the glare drove them back, blinded and dizzy. Isabel
herself had scarcely time for escape, so rapid was the conflagration.
Alarmed for her husband, she rushed to his tent--to find him already
awakened by the noise, and issuing from its entrance, his drawn sword
in his hand. The wind, which had a few minutes before but curled the
triumphant banners, now circulated the destroying flame. It spread
from tent to tent, almost as a flash of lightning that shoots along
neighbouring clouds. The camp was in one continued blaze, ere a man
could dream of checking the conflagration.

Not waiting to hear the confused tale of his royal consort, Ferdinand,
exclaiming, "The Moors have done this--they will be on us!" ordered the
drums to beat and the trumpets to sound, and hastened in person,
wrapped merely in his long mantle, to alarm his chiefs. While that
well-disciplined and veteran army, fearing every moment the rally of the
foe, endeavoured rapidly to form themselves into some kind of order, the
flame continued to spread till the whole heavens were illumined. By its
light, cuirass and helmet glowed, as in the furnace, and the armed men
seemed rather like life-like and lurid meteors than human forms. The
city of Granada was brought near to them by the intensity of the glow;
and, as a detachment of cavalry spurred from the camp to meet the
anticipated surprise of the Paynims, they saw, upon the walls and roofs
of Granada, the Moslems clustering and their spears gleaming. But,
equally amazed with the Christians, and equally suspicious of craft
and design, the Moors did not issue from their gates. Meanwhile the
conflagration, as rapid to die as to begin, grew fitful and feeble; and
the night seemed to fall with a melancholy darkness over the ruin of
that silken city.

Ferdinand summoned his council. He had now perceived it was no ambush of
the Moors. The account of Isabel, which, at last, he comprehended; the
strange and almost miraculous manner in which Almamen had baffled his
guards, and penetrated to the royal tent; might have aroused his Gothic
superstition, while it relieved his more earthly apprehensions, if he
had not remembered the singular, but far from supernatural dexterity
with which Eastern warriors and even robbers continued then, as now, to
elude the most vigilant precautions and baffle th