While waiting for Sarafoff, the band had been surrounded. The heights were a mass of broken boulders which afforded protection to their enemies as well as to the insurgents. Only one spot, to the south, was smooth and bare, and this space the Turkish commander took the precaution not to occupy, for two reasons. First, his men would have been picked off as fast as they filled it, and the sacrifice evidently did not appear to him to be necessary; secondly, the opening acted as a bait for the hard-pressed insurgents, tempting them into the passage, on each side of which soldiers were massed in strong force. Sarafoff surmised that this was a trap, and, while realising the hopelessness of his position, chose to fight it out where the lives of the band would cost the Turks dearest. Until ten o’clock the Turks, certain of success, made no attempt to storm the position. They had taken up secure places behind rocks, and keeping up a desultory firing, they awaited the arrival of reinforcements, for which they had sent to a near-by town. The reinforcements came--for the sake of speed, in the shape of cavalry and artillery. The cavalry could not get into action because of the roughness of the ground, and was deployed as a patrol to prevent any other band which might be in the neighbourhood from coming to the relief of Sarafoff. The artillery could not be brought into close quarters for the same reason, but it was posted on an eminence quite within range. Shortly before noon the cannon opened fire. The target was rather small and decidedly indefinite, and for nearly an hour the shells went over or fell short of the insurgent position; but when the artillerymen finally succeeded in getting the range, the flying splinters of shell and stone meant certain death to anyone who dared to put his head above the rocks. The insurgent fire slackened under this hail, and the Turkish commander, evidently supposing that the band had been materially reduced in number, ordered an assault from all sides. The cannon fire was discontinued for fear of working slaughter among the charging soldiers, and the Turks came forward to the attack, dodging from rock to rock, and closing in on all sides--except in the space purposely left open. Sarafoff ordered half of his men to lay down their guns and prepare their dynamite, and cautioned the others to make every rifle shot strike its mark. He himself, expecting a hand-to-hand encounter at the last, laid aside his gun, drew his sword, and strapped it to his hand. The riflemen did their work well. Turks fell on every side; but on they came! When the foremost of them got to within twenty yards of the little fort, the insurgents began to throw their bombs. The Turks have a terror of the dynamite bomb, and these ‘infernal machines’ checked their advance for a time. At a lull in the din there were repeated shouts from the Turks in Bulgarian (which many of them speak), ‘Lay down your arms and surrender, Sarafoff! the Padisha is