their backs to
the wind, were very little incommoded. The result was that Kan-ki was
repulsed with considerable loss, and was obliged to make the best of
his way back to Hujaku's quarters to save the remainder of his men.

He was now desperate. Hujaku had declared that if he came back without
having gained a victory he should die, and he had no doubt that the
man was violent and reckless enough to keep his word. He determined
not to submit. He might as well die fighting, he thought, at the head
of his troops, as to be ignobly put to death by Hujaku's executioner.
So he arranged it with his troops, who probably hated Hujaku as much
as he did, that, on returning to the town, they should march in under
arms, take possession of the place, surround the palace, and seize the
general and make him prisoner, or kill him if he should attempt any
resistance.

The troops accordingly, when they arrived at the gates of the town,
seized and disarmed the guards, and then marched in, brandishing their
weapons, and uttering loud shouts and outcries, which excited first a
feeling of astonishment and then of terror among the inhabitants. The
alarm soon spread to the palace. Indeed, the troops themselves soon
reached and surrounded the palace, and began thundering at the gates
to gain admission. They soon forced their way in. Hujaku, in the mean
time, terrified and panic-stricken, had fled from the palace into the
gardens, in hopes to make his escape by the garden walls. The soldiers
pursued him. In his excitement and agitation he leaped down from a
wall too high for such a descent, and, in his fall, broke his leg. He
lay writhing helplessly on the ground when the soldiers came up. They
were wild and furious with the excitement of pursuit, and they killed
him with their spears where he lay.

Kan-ki took the head of his old enemy and carried it to the capital,
with the intention of offering it to the emperor, and also of
surrendering himself to the officers of justice, in order, as he said,
that he might be put to death for the crime of which he had been
guilty in heading a military revolt and killing his superior officer.
By all the laws of war this was a most heinous and a wholly
unpardonable offense.

But the emperor was heartily glad that the turbulent and unmanageable
old general was put out of the way, for a man so unprincipled, so
ambitious, and so reckless as Hujaku was is always an object of
aversion and terror to all who have