CHAPTER VIII

In the year 1446, according to the Christian era, an enormous comet appeared upon the horizon. The golden tint of this phenomenon of the heavens was observed for six months amongst the stars, and when it was closest to earth two-fourths of the sky was covered by the dreaded spectre. When the sun set and the gigantic marvel made its appearance, the pale phosphor head drawing its tail after it, everything was lit up by its wonderful light. Forests, mountains, people's faces, appeared ghastly by its illumination, and all around amongst the mountains was to be seen a glow which appeared like a distant fire lighting up the sky. Only the reflection of the light was not red, but green; and when the moon made her appearance, with her silver-tipped crescent, the two heavenly wanderers followed after one another with curious wonder. Once it happened that the moon went into the vaporous element of the comet, and astronomers then calculated how many million miles it covered and how long it would take before it would touch the moon with its head in place of its tail. Then both would shoot down from heaven, and the Day of Judgment would arrive. Religious folk went on pilgrimages and awaited the _Dies Iræ_; whose herald was this Lampadias, the name given it by Greek astronomers. Under the fearful glitter of this heavenly phenomenon, which wandered over the horizon and lit up the entire surface of the earth, compelling the inhabitants to breathe its deadly poison, the two most dreaded men in the Mussulman world prepared to fight against one another in a life and death struggle. Sultan Bajazet had 420,000 men; Timur Lenk had 780,000. One million two hundred thousand fighting men, therefore, had to seek a suitable place amidst the Asiatic wastes, which would afford sufficient space for the blood required to be shed.

The two conquerors of the world were not alarmed by the sign from Heaven. They not only divided between them the stars which led them, but they also cut the comet asunder! The head of the Lampadias bent towards the west, and the thinner end of its long mane hung to the east. Bajazet said it was a sword which the Prophet had sent to him, and that with its aid he should kill the heretic Shitáá. Tamerlan, however, gave out that this was the same club which the Prophet had given into his hands, and that the head was turned towards the heretic Szunnita. The stars at the end of the tail he held to be the head of the club, with which he would lay him low! And so, the two greatest generals of the period started in search of one another with two enormous forces, and as quickly as they neared one another, so quickly did the dreaded star approach the earth! The two conquerors debated to themselves which of them would first grasp the comet by its tail!