e confidant of victory. He sent an insulting order to the ambassadors
to follow his encampment and await his pleasure, and paid no further
heed to their pacific mission.

The Save, an affluent of the Danube, was crossed, and the army lost
sight of the great stream, and laid its course by a direct route through
Sclavonia towards the borders of Styria, the outlying Austrian province
in that direction. It was the shortest line of march available, the
distance to be covered being about two hundred miles. On reaching the
Styrian frontier, the Illyrian mountain chain needed to be crossed, and
within it lay the obstacle with which Solyman had to contend.

The route of the army led through a mountain pass. In this pass was a
petty and obscure town, Guntz by name, badly fortified, and garrisoned
by a mere handful of men, eight hundred in all. Its principal means of
defence lay in the presence of an indomitable commander, Nicholas
Jurissitz, a man of iron nerve and fine military skill.

Ibrahim Pasha, who led the vanguard of the Turkish force, ordered the
occupation of this mountain fortress, and learned with anger and
mortification that Guntz had closed its gates and frowned defiance on
his men. Word was sent back to Solyman, who probably laughed in his
beard at the news. It was as if a fly had tried to stop an ox.

"Brush it away and push onward," was probably the tenor of his orders.

But Guntz was not to be brushed away. It stood there like an awkward
fact, its guns commanding the pass through which the army must march, a
ridiculous obstacle which had to be dealt with however time might press.

The sultan sent orders to his advance-guard to take the town and march
on. Ibrahim Pasha pushed forward, assailed it, and found that he had not
men enough for the work. The little town with its little garrison had
the temper of a shrew, and held its own against him valiantly. A few
more battalions were sent, but still the town held out. The sultan,
enraged at this opposition, now despatched what he considered an
overwhelming force, with orders to take the town without delay, and to
punish the garrison as they deserved for their foolish obstinacy. But
what was his surprise and fury to receive word that the pigmy still held
out stubbornly against the leviathan, that all their efforts to take it
were in vain, and that its guns commanded and swept the pass so that it
was impossible to advance under its storm of death-dealing balls.