at once came galloping up to Caretto.

"Why don't you go on firing?" he cried.

"Because it is impossible," replied the engineer, coolly folding his
arms.

"Why is it impossible," thundered the pasha, his whole body convulsed
with rage, which the coolness of the Italian raised to fever heat.

"Because the guns are red-hot from incessant firing."

"Then throw water upon them!" cried Ali, and with that he dismounted
from his horse.

Caretto, for the life of him, could not help laughing at this
senseless command. Whereupon Tepelenti suddenly leaped upon him and
struck him in the face, so that his cap flew far away, right off the
bastion. He had struck Caretto on the very spot where Kurshid Pasha's
grenade had lacerated his face a few weeks before.

The Italian readjusted over his eye the bandage, which had been
knocked all awry by the blow, and observed, with a cold affectation of
mirth:

"You did well, sir, to strike my face on the spot where one eye had
been knocked out already, for if you had struck me on the other side
you might have knocked out the other eye also, and then how could I
have pointed your guns?"

Ali, however, pretended to take no notice, but directed that the guns
should be douched with cold water and then reloaded; he himself fired
the first. The cannon the same instant burst in two and smashed the
leg of a cannonier standing close to it.

"It does not matter," cried Ali; "load the others, too."

When the second cannon also burst he dashed the match to the ground,
threw himself on his horse, and galloped off, quivering in every nerve
as if shaken by an ague.

The Italian, however, with the utmost _sang-froid_, ordered that the
exploded cannons should be removed and fresh ones fetched from the
arsenal and put in their places, and set them in position amidst a
shower of bullets from the besiegers. When the battery was ready the
enemy withdrew their siege guns, and till the next day not another
shot was fired against Janina.

Tepelenti was well aware that he had mortally offended Caretto, and he
had learned to know men (especially Italians) only too well to imagine
for an instant that Caretto, for all his jocoseness on the occasion,
would ever forget that cowardly and ungrateful blow. For, indeed, it
was an act of the vilest ingratitude. What! to strike the wound which
the man had received on his account! To strike a European officer in
the face! Ali was well aware that such a thing coul