But the intrenchment was strong, and furnished with thick pointed stakes. The assailants, urging forward and aiding each other, gained its ridge; they were received with swords and pikes, and fell back dying upon their comrades; others filled their places. The bodies of the wounded, which in some places gradually filled up the ditch, afforded them a passage. Many of the enemy had succeeded in throwing themselves into the midst of the defenders, and in opening deep passages among them which were instantly occupied by the most daring. The deep front which the Brenn had formed behind the intrenchment was broken. Then it was that he unmasked the two egresses at the extremities, sending out from both the troops of chosen warriors, who, keeping close along the deserted rampart, fell upon the dense stream of assailants. So compact was the crowd, and so great the pressure against the intrenchment, that they had scarcely room to move. The two detachments above mentioned were mowing away before them to enable them to advance. But the enemy kept pouring in, and the space regained was immediately filled with fresh assailants, who, disregarding the attacks on their flanks, pushed furiously on to the centre. The bodies of the slain and the faggots had filled the ditch for the length of a hundred paces, and the loosened stakes formed but a slight protection to the defenders. The noise of the attack brought a great number of women hurrying to the spot. They might be seen with bare arms, raising stones above their heads, and hurling them with shrill cries against the breasts of the assailants, or despatching the wounded that had fallen inside the intrenchment with the culinary wooden pestles used for pounding herbs and flesh in hollow stones. A shout was raised, the crowd of assailants opened, and a hundred men were seen steadily advancing, bearing on their shoulders an enormous trunk of a tree, and surrounded by warriors armed with axes. This column overthrowing all in its passage, whether friend or foe, made a wide lane in the intrenchment, strewn with dead and wounded. The beam was already more than half way through on the inside of the defences when the women ran in, and rushing like she-wolves on the flanks of the column, passed between the warriors, and clung to the legs of the bearers. The enormous beam swayed, toppled over, and bore down in its fall both assailants and defenders by its vast weight. Sigild profiting by the confusion, then dashed into the breach, followed by a troop of warriors which he had not without difficulty kept in reserve. In his return he cut himself a passage through the crowd of assailants. Seeing this movement, the warriors who had issued from the two ends of the inner intrenchment redoubled their efforts. Others rushed on to the rampart-walk by the side issues of the intrenchment, and fell upon the enemies within or without the rampart. The latter, cramped within this narrow space, and