genteel sport; and so I was thrust down on the floor, whilst a
whole army 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