ck.

Then they took another counsel. Standing among the dead and dying at the
base of the wall, which was built of loose stones and earth, where we
could not easily get at them because of the showers of spears which
were rained at anyone who showed himself, they began to undermine it,
levering out the bottom stones with stakes and battering them with
poles.

In five minutes a breach appeared, through which they poured
tumultuously. It was hopeless to withstand that onslaught of so vast a
number. Fighting desperately, we were driven down the tunnel and through
the doors that were opened to us, into the first court of the temple.
By furious efforts we managed to close these doors and block them
with stones and earth. But this did not avail us long, for, bringing
brushwood and dry grass, they built a fire against them that soon caught
the thick cedar wood of which they were made.

While they burned we consulted together. Further retreat seemed
impossible, since the second court of the temple, save for a narrow
passage, was filled with corn which allowed no room for fighting,
while behind it were gathered all the women and children, more than two
thousand of them. Here, or nowhere, we must make our stand and conquer
or die. Up to this time, compared with what which we had inflicted upon
the Black Kendah, of whom a couple of thousand or more had fallen, our
loss was comparatively slight, say two hundred killed and as many more
wounded. Most of such of the latter as could not walk we had managed to
carry into the first court of the temple, laying them close against the
cloister walls, whence they watched us in a grisly ring.

This left us about sixteen hundred able-bodied men or many more than we
could employ with effect in that narrow place. Therefore we determined
to act upon a plan which we had already designed in case such an
emergency as ours should arise. About three hundred and fifty of the
best men were to remain to defend the temple till all were slain. The
rest, to the number of over a thousand, were to withdraw through the
second court and the gates beyond to the camp of the women and children.
These they were to conduct by secret paths that were known to them to
where the camels were kraaled, and mounting as many as possible of
them on the camels to fly whither they could. Our hope was that the
victorious Black Kendah would be too exhausted to follow them across the
plain to the distant mountains. It was a dre