, d'un oeil brulant de rage,
Parmi ses ennemis chacun s'ouvre un passage.

_La Henriade._

Now yield thee, or by him who made
The world! thy heart-blood dyes my blade.--
Thy threats, thy mercy I despise,
Let recreant yield, who fears to die.--

_Sir Walter Scott._

The shadows of evening were falling round when Alonso de Aguilar and his
gallant army arrived at the plain that skirts the mountain of the Sierra
Bermeja. The rebels, with El Feri de Benastepar at their head, who had
already been worsted in the plain, had resolved not to hazard another
battle, but to keep possession of the mountains, confident of the
advantages of their position. El Feri, therefore, having secured all the
heights and passes of the Sierra, beheld with inward satisfaction the
approach of the enemy; indeed, his situation could not be improved;
nature had fashioned an impregnable fortress in the whole circumference
of that huge mountain; large masses of rock frowned at intervals around
the summit and extended down the sides, and the hollows were filled up
with large clumps of trees, the growth of ages. There was only one path
by which an ascent appeared practicable, narrow, steep and tortuous, and
this perilous pass from the nature of its position might be defended by
a handful of brave men; numerous small ravines were likewise observable,
by which a laborious and difficult ascent might be attempted, although
they were almost choaked with different impediments, being the beds of
the torrents which at times poured their headlong course down the sides
of the mountain.

The Christians beheld with dread the formidable array which the Sierra
presented. The Moors from the adjacent country had flocked to the
standard of El Feri, confiding in the prosperous turn which their
enterprise was likely to take; they manifested both their hopes and
defiance by a prolonged succession of shouts and barbaric yells, which,
in lengthened and fearful clamour, were reverberated through the rocky
passes and solitary caverns of those mountains.

Alonso de Aguilar was struck with the advantages which the rebels
derived from their position, and the attempt to ascend the mountain,
crowned as it was with desperate men, might be considered more a deed of
madness than an act of true courage; but again he thought of the evil
which procrastinated measures often produce in a war of this n