As horses, nervous and high-spirited Champ foaming bits, pawing the air and shattering hard rocks Into a thousand pieces beneath their stamping hoofs, So these proud savages all eager for the fray Begin the dance at once. Gaily at first, Then their blood inflamed by beat and rhythm With feverish spirit, most swift movements made, Tearing out gray hairs in frenzy of excitement, While with a thousand lightning leaps They crushed the rocks with their strong feet And spurred themselves to greater heat with cries So loud and terrifying that the hellish clamor Seemed like the lamentations of the souls Of all the injured ones of earth,— Not till the dawn did their wild dancing cease.[63] While the hideous din of a war dance filled the night with sound, the little band of courageous men encamped below the mesa and planned their coming fight for supremacy. Next morning, January 22, 1599, just two months after the massacre, with their war-cry of “Santiago! Santiago!” the small force of only sixty soldiers began the assault upon the fortress. They were met from above by a rain of arrows and stones that did their deadly work. But this was only a feint on the part of the Spaniards. During the previous night, under protection of the darkness and the clamor of the war dance on the mesa, the Spaniards had sent twelve men, chosen for their skill, with the one and only cannon in their possession, to make their way up the southern mesa. These men had crept stealthily around under the precipices and, though hampered by heavy armor, had successfully reached a great outlying ledge of rock on the uninhabited cliff of Ácoma, from which the other was separated by a narrow but fearful chasm. This they determined to bridge, and it took heroic effort. Small pines which grew above the great precipices on the south had been cut. With superhuman effort they were dragged down, and across a troughlike valley, and then again up the perpendicular ledges to where the twelve men were perched with their cannon. All this was done in the night of the twenty-second. When the grey dawn came over the silent landscape on the twenty-third, all but a dozen, left to guard the horses, had joined their comrades, who were screened by pinnacles of rock from the sight of the Indians. Here, according to Villagrá,[64] Father Martínez offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Engelhardt[65] adds, “It was the first time that the holy Mysteries were celebrated on the lofty peñol of Ácoma. During this Holy Mass, all the Spaniards received Holy Communion: doubtless many supposed it was their Viaticum.” Then the _comisario_ addressed the little band, adjuring them, while defending Church and King, to be chary of wantonness in killing.