It was a terrible scene of despair
and death.

After an hour of firing, a gloomy silence descended on the place, now
occupied solely by a heap of corpses. Ali forbade any burial rites on
pain of death, and placed over the gate an inscription in letters of
gold, informing posterity that six hundred Kardikiotes had there been
sacrificed to the memory of his mother Kamco.

When the shrieks of death ceased in the enclosure, they began to be heard
in the town. The assassins spread themselves through it, and having
violated the women and children, gathered them into a crowd to be driven
to Libokovo. At every halt in this frightful journey fresh marauders
fell on the wretched victims, claiming their share in cruelty and
debauchery. At length they arrived at their destination, where the
triumphant and implacable Chainitza awaited them. As after the taking of
Kormovo, she compelled the women to cut off their hair and to stuff with
it a mattress on which she lay. She then stripped them, and joyfully
narrated to them the massacre of their husbands, fathers, brothers and
sons, and when she had sufficiently enjoyed their misery they were again
handed over to the insults of the soldiery. Chainitza finally published
an edict forbidding either clothes, shelter, or food to be given to the
women and children of Kardiki, who were then driven forth into the woods
either to die of hunger or to be devoured by wild beasts. As to the
seventy-two hostages, Ali put them all to death when he returned to
Janina. His vengeance was indeed complete.

But as, filled with a horrible satisfaction, the pacha was enjoying the
repose of a satiated tiger, an indignant and threatening voice reached
him even in the recesses of his palace. The Sheik Yussuf, governor of
the castle of Janina, venerated as a saint by the Mohammedans on account
of his piety, and universally beloved and respected for his many virtues,
entered Ali's sumptuous dwelling for the first time. The guards on
beholding him remained stupefied and motionless, then the most devout
prostrated themselves, while others went to inform the pacha; but no one
dared hinder the venerable man, who walked calmly and solemnly through
the astonished attendants. For him there existed no antechamber, no
delay; disdaining the ordinary forms of etiquette, he paced slowly
through the various apartments, until, with no usher to announce him, he
reached that of Ali. The latter, whose impiety by no m