to rest themselves there; but when I came
to so great a heap of bodies I looked down at them, and saw that sharp,
hard appearance of the face which is never to be mistaken. Many of them
were quite black with suffocation, and farther on were others all bloody
and covered with the brains and entrails of those who had been trodden
to pieces by the crowd.

At this time there was no crowd in this part of the church; but a
little farther on, round the corner towards the great door, the people,
who were quite panic-struck, continued to press forward, and every one
was doing his utmost to escape. The guards outside, frightened at the
rush from within, thought that the Christians wished to attack them, and
the confusion soon grew into a battle. The soldiers with their bayonets
killed numbers of fainting wretches, and the walls were spattered with
blood and brains of men who had been felled, like oxen, with the
butt-ends of the soldiers' muskets. Every one struggled to defend
himself or to get away, and in the melee all who fell were immediately
trampled to death by the rest. So desperate and savage did the fight
become, that even the panic-struck and frightened pilgrims appear at
last to have been more intent upon the destruction of each other than
desirous to save themselves.

For my part, as soon as I perceived the danger I had cried out to my
companions to turn back, which they had done; but I myself was carried
on by the press till I came near the door, where all were fighting for
their lives. Here, seeing certain destruction before me, I made every
endeavour to get back. An officer of the Pasha's, who by his star was a
colonel or bin bashee, equally alarmed with myself, was also trying to
return: he caught hold of my cloak, or bournouse, and pulled me down on
the body of an old man who was breathing out his last sigh. As the
officer was pressing me to the ground we wrestled together among the
dying and the dead with the energy of despair. I struggled with this man
till I pulled him down, and happily got again upon my legs--(I
afterwards found that he never rose again)--and scrambling over a pile
of corpses, I made my way back into the body of the church, where I
found my friends, and we succeeded in reaching the sacristy of the
Catholics, and thence the room which had been assigned to us by the
monks. The dead were lying in heaps, even upon the stone of unction; and
I saw full four hundred wretched people, dead and living