natural and artificial barriers they heaped piles of lava-blocks, sharp,
jagged, and weighing each from one to five pounds. The invaders had a
few very flimsy bows, scarcely six arrows to each bow--and nothing else
in the way of weapons. From all sides, on came the invaders in their
frail boats, in one mad rush upon the main island of Hili-li, where the
Hili-lites had, including their women, children, and aged men, gathered.

"The invaders were ill-fed, tired out by a sea-voyage exhausting almost
past comprehension, ignorant, almost weaponless, and making a charge in
small boats; whilst for them the favorable elements in the coming battle
were that they possessed five men for each two of the defenders, and
were impelled by a mad, instinctive impulse to advance, similar to that
of a swarm of migratory locusts, which advances even through fire, and
though it require the charred bodies of ninety-nine thousand of their
number over which the remaining thousand may cross. The Hili-lites were
well-fed, not fatigued, intelligent, comparatively well-armed, and were
on land, prepared for the battle; whilst they possessed also the
inherited Roman spirit, once lost by their ancestors, but by the
descendants recovered amid new and pure surroundings.

"Before a landing could be made, half the invaders, in the confusion
incident to a bombardment with lava-blocks, were thrown from their boats
and drowned, or knocked on the head as they swam ashore. Of the other
half, a third were killed as they attempted to land, and another third
within five minutes after they reached the shore. Then the remaining
fifteen thousand or more rushed back to their boats, only to find them
sunk in the shallow water near the shore--it having been quite easy for
eight or ten Hili-lites to sink each boat, by bearing in unison their
weight on one gunwale--a thousand or two young Hili-lites having been
assigned to that duty. Then the poor wretches who remained threw down