The princess approached her father to comfort him, but there was no one to console the empress and the other maidens. Rumors of the bad news ran throughout the city, and everyone broke into loud wailing for the friends and relatives they believed had been killed. Let us leave them to their weeping and see what is happening to Tirant. Having bolstered his men's spirits with his words, they were very optimistic, trusting the great judgement of the captain. Tirant left the encampment at the top well guarded, and took a man with him and went down the back side of the mountain without being seen. When he was at the bottom, he left his armor under a tree, and cautiously stole up to the castle of Lord Malvei. He picked up two stones, one in each hand, and just as they had agreed, he signaled by hitting them together. When Lord Malvei heard the signal, he opened the gates of the bridge. Tirant went in, and found everything that had been prepared. First he had a great deal of oil and tar poured into a wooden bucket, along with pitch and quicklime and other things that would help make a fire, and he gathered a good deal of dry wood, and he had it all spread on top of the wooden raft he had made, and tied two long ropes to each of the chains of the raft. The two men got into a small fishing boat, and each of them held one of the ropes. When the raft was untied, the current carried it downriver, and whenever it would become stuck on one side of the river one of the men would pull on a rope to free it. Tirant told them not to light the fire until they were near the bridge. When the Turks saw such huge flames in the river, they believed they were lost, and the sultan and all his men abandoned their camp. Fleeing as quickly as they could, they ran toward the wooden bridge. As the sultan had a good horse, he first waited until the fire reached the bridge, and then he went across, and many men followed him. And if the two men had followed the captain's orders and waited to light the fire, all would have been killed or taken prisoner. In their rush to cross to the other side, many Moors and their horses fell into the water. The fire was so great that the entire bridge quickly burned down. And twenty-two thousand or more men were unable to cross the bridge. When Tirant observed the fire going down the river, he cautiously worked his way back to his troops. He found nearly all of them mounted, wanting to get their enemies' booty. But Tirant would not allow it, telling them: "We would gain no honor now. Tomorrow we will have the honor and the booty." In spite of all that had happened, Tirant had a very tight watch set that night, saying: "Not all of them could have gotten across. In their desperation, couldn't they fall on us?"