The guards remained motionless in surprise and horror, then as the pacha, with a roar, repeated his order, they indignantly flung down their arms.  In vain he harangued, flattered, or threatened them; some preserved a sullen silence, others ventured to demand mercy.  Then he ordered them away, and, calling on the Christian Mirdites who served under his banner.

“To you, brave Latins,” he cried, “I will now entrust the duty of exterminating the foes of my race.  Avenge me, and I will reward you magnificently.”

A confused murmur rose from the ranks.  Ali imagined they were consulting as to what recompense should be required as the price of such deed.

“Speak,” said he; “I am ready to listen to your demands and to satisfy them.”

Then the Mirdite leader came forward and threw back the hood of his black cloak.

“O Pacha!” said he, looking Ali boldly in the face, “thy words are an insult; the Mirdites do not slaughter unarmed prisoners in cold blood.  Release the Kardikiotes, give them arms, and we will fight them to the death; but we serve thee as soldiers and not as executioners.”

At these words; which the black-cloaked battalion received with applause, Ali thought himself betrayed, and looked around with doubt and mistrust.  Fear was nearly taking the place of mercy, words of pardon were on his lips, when a certain Athanasius Vaya, a Greek schismatic, and a favourite of the pacha’s, whose illegitimate son he was supposed to be, advanced at the head of the scum of the army, and offered to carry out the death sentence.  Ali applauded his zeal, gave him full authority to act, and spurred his horse to the top of a neighbouring hill, the better to enjoy the spectacle.  The Christian Mirdites and the Mohammedan guards knelt together to pray for the miserable Kardikiotes, whose last hour had come.

The caravanserai where they were shut in was a square enclosure, open to the sky, and intended to shelter herds of buffaloes.  The prisoners having heard nothing of what passed outside, were astonished to behold Athanasius Vaya and his troop appearing on the top of the wall.  They did not long remain in doubt.  Ali gave the signal by a pistol-shot, and a general fusillade followed.  Terrible cries echoed from the court; the prisoners, terrified, wounded, crowded one upon another for shelter.  Some ran frantically hither and thither in this enclosure with no shelter and no exit, until they fell, struck down by bullets.  Some tried to climb the walls, in hope of either escape or vengeance, only to be flung back by either scimitars or muskets.  It was a terrible scene of despair and death.

After an hour of firing, a gloomy silence descended on the place, now occupied solely by a heap of corpses.  Ali forbade any burial rites on pain of death, and placed over the gate an inscription in letters of gold, informing posterity that six hundred Kardikiotes had there been sacrificed to the memory of his mother Kamco.