of men trod in over me to the attack.

What had happened was clear to me now, though I was powerless to do
anything in hindrance. The rebels with more craft than any one had
credited to them, had driven a galley from their camp under the ground,
intending so to make an entrance into the heart of the city. In their
clumsy ignorance, and having no one of sufficient talent in mensuration,
they had bungled sadly both in direction and length, and so had ended
their burrow under this chamber of the captain of the gate. The great
flagstone in its fall had, it appeared, crushed four of them to death,
but these were little noticed or lamented. Life was to them a bauble of
the slenderest price, and a horde of others pressed through the opening,
lusting for the fight, and recking nothing of their risks and perils.

Half-choked by the foul air of the galley, and trodden on by this great
procession of feet, it was little enough I could do to help my immediate
self much less the more distant city. But when the chief mass of the
attackers had passed through, and there came only here and there one
eager to take his share at storming the gate, a couple of fellows
plucked me up out of the mud on the floor, and began dragging me down
through the stinking darkness of the galley towards the pit that gave it
entrance.

Twenty times we were jostled by others hastening to the attack, either
from hunger for fight, or from appetite for what they could steal.
But we came to the open at last, and half-suffocated though I was, I
contrived to do obeisance, and say aloud the prescribed prayer to the
most High Gods in gratitude for the fresh, sweet air which They had
provided.

Our Lord the Sun was on the verge of rising for His day, and all things
were plainly shown. Before me were the monstrous walls of the capital,
with the heads of its pyramids and higher buildings showing above them.
And on the walls, the sentries walked calmly their appointed paces, or
took shelter against arrows in the casemates provided for them.

The din of fighting within the gate rose high into the air, and the
heavy roaring of the cave-tigers told that they too were taking their
share of the melee. But the massive stonework of the walls hid all the
actual engagement from our view, and which party was getting the upper
hand we could not even guess. But the sounds told how tight a fight was
being hammered out in those narrow boundaries, and my veins tingled to
be once