_ 449 _ necessary, though it pained him to witness the gloom and despair that had gripped the city because of our absence. The news of our departure greatly encouraged the Turks who promptly approached the city with high hopes of taking it. They made a number of assaults during the night but found everything so well defended that after twenty days spent in this effort to no avail, and with no hope of achieving their goal, they were on the point of withdrawing. However, they had an informer inside the city. When they bribed him, he showed them a place where they could enter and where the defenders had failed to place a guard because it was so dark. One night they entered that spot without being noticed. Letting out innumerable screams and firing off countless muskets, they killed everyone they found, plunging the city into such great confusion and uproar that no one thought of anything else except to save his life. On learning that the Turks were inside the city and believing that this had clearly been done to him through treachery, and that the enemy would be searching primarily for him, he fled from the fortress, taking with him the Portuguese and those who were with him, to the foothills of the sierra. There he was safe and sound, and
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