It was Don John's purpose to assail the place on opposite quarters. Padilla, who still smarted from his wound, was to attack the town, as before, on the side towards the Gardens. The chief object of this manoeuvre was to create a diversion in favour of the principal assault, which was to be made on the other side of the rock, where the springing of the mine, it was expected, would open a ready access to the castle. The command on this quarter was given to a brave officer named Antonio Moreno. Don John, at the head of four thousand men, occupied a position which enabled him to overlook the scene of action. On the twenty-seventh, at eight in the morning, the signal was given by the firing of a cannon; and Padilla, at the head of his veterans, moved forward to the attack. They effected their entrance into the town with even less opposition than before; for the cannonade from the Gardens had blown away most of the houses, garrisoned by the Moslems, near the wall. But as the assailants pushed on, they soon became entangled, as before, in the long and narrow defiles. The enemy, entrenched behind their redoubts thrown across the streets, poured down their murderous volleys into the close ranks of the Spaniards, who were overwhelmed, as on the former occasion, with deadly missiles of all kinds from the occupants of the houses. But experience had prepared them for this; and they had come provided with mantelets, to shelter them from the tempest. Yet, when the annoyance became intolerable, they would storm the dwellings; and a bloody struggle usually ended in putting their inmates to the sword. Each barricade, too, as the Spaniards advanced, became the scene of a desperate combat, where the musket was cast aside, and men fought hand to hand with sword and dagger. Now rose the fierce battle-cries of the combatants, one party calling on St. Jago, the other on Mahomet, thus intimating that it was still the same war of the Cross and the Crescent which had been carried on for more than eight centuries in the Peninsula.[222] The shouts of the combatants, the clash of weapons, the report of musketry from the adjoining houses, the sounds of falling missiles, filled the air with an unearthly din, that was reverberated and prolonged in countless echoes through the narrow streets, converting the once peaceful city into a Pandemonium. Still the Spaniards, though slowly winning their way through every obstacle, were far from the table-land on the summit, where they hoped to join their countrymen from the other quarter of the town. At this crisis a sound arose which overpowered every other sound in this wild uproar, and for a few moments suspended the conflict.