intolerable was to behold the sea covered with
ships daily arriving with provisions for the besiegers. Day after day
also they saw herds of fat cattle and flocks of sheep driven into the
camp. Wheat and flour were piled in huge mounds in the centre of the
encampments, glaring in the sunshine, and tantalizing the wretched
citizens, who, while they and their children were perishing with hunger,
beheld prodigal abundance reigning within a bow-shot of their walls.

CHAPTER LIX.

HOW A MOORISH SANTON UNDERTOOK TO DELIVER THE CITY OF MALAGA FROM THE
POWER OF ITS ENEMIES.

There lived at this time in a hamlet in the neighborhood of Guadix an
ancient Moor of the name of Ibrahim el Guerbi. He was a native of the
island of Guerbes, in the kingdom of Tunis, and had for several years
led the life of a santon or hermit. The hot sun of Africa had dried his
blood, and rendered him of an exalted yet melancholy temperament. He
passed most of his time in caves of the mountains in meditation,
prayer, and rigorous abstinence, until his body was wasted and his mind
bewildered, and he fancied himself favored with divine revelations and
visited by angels sent by Mahomet. The Moors, who had a great reverence
for all enthusiasts of the kind, believed in his being inspired,
listened to all his ravings as veritable prophecies, and denominated him
"el santo," or the saint.

The woes of the kingdom of Granada had long exasperated the gloomy
spirit of this man, and he had beheld with indignation this beautiful
country wrested from the dominion of the faithful and becoming a prey
to the unbelievers. He had implored the blessings of Allah on the troops
which issued forth from Guadix for the relief of Malaga, but when he saw
them return routed and scattered by their own countrymen, he retired to
his cell, shut himself up from the world, and was plunged for a time in
the blackest melancholy.

On a sudden he made his appearance again in the streets of Guadix, his
face haggard, his form emaciated, but his eyes beaming with fire. He
said that Allah had sent an angel to him in the solitude of his cell,
revealing to him a mode of delivering Malaga from its perils and
striking horror and confusion into the camp of the unbelievers. The
Moors listened with eager credulity to his words: four hundred of them
offered to follow him even to the death and to obey implicitly his
commands. Of this number many were Gomeres, anxious to relieve their
countryme