Great King leap from his throne in rage and despair as he saw his best troops slaughtered and defeated by this tiny band of fighters. For two days this went on until the plain in front of the wall was covered with dead and dying Persians and mercenaries while the Greeks had hardly any losses. Baffled and dispirited Xerxes was actually on the point of leading back his great army when a traitor, for a great sum of gold, betrayed a secret path up the mountainside. It was none other than the bottom of a mountain torrent through the shallow water of which men could wade and find a way which would lead them safely around to the rear of the Grecian army. On the early morning of the third day word was brought to Leonidas that the enemy had gained the heights above and that by noon they would leave the plain and entirely encircle the little Grecian army. A hasty council of war was called. All of the allied forces except the Spartans agreed that the position could not be held further and advised an honorable retreat. The Spartan band alone refused to go, although Leonidas tried to save two of his kinsmen by giving them letters and messages to Sparta. One of them answered that he had come to fight and not to carry letters and the other that his deeds would tell all that Sparta needed to know. Another one named Dienices, when told that the enemy's archers were so numerous that their arrows darkened the sun, replied, "So much the better, for we shall fight in the shade." The little band took a farewell of their comrades and watched them march away and then without waiting to be attacked, this tiny body of three hundred men marched out from behind their ramparts and attacked a force nearly ten thousand times their own number. Right through the slave-ranks they broke and fought their way to a little hillock where back to back they defended themselves against the whole vast army of the Persians. Again and again waves of men dashed up from all sides against this little hill, but only to fall back leaving their dead behind. At last the spears of the Spartans broke and they fought until their swords were dulled and dashed out of their hands. Then they fought on with their daggers, with their hands and their teeth until not one living man was left, but only a mound of slain, bristled over with arrows and surrounded by ring after ring of dead Persians, Medes, Arabs, Ethiopians and the other mercenaries which had been dashed against them. So died Leonidas and his band of heroes. Nearly ten thousand of the Persian army lay dead around them during the three days of hand-to-hand fighting. By their death they had gained time for the armies of the Grecian states to organize and, best of all, they had taught Persian and Greek alike that brave men cannot be beaten down by mere numbers.