Five minutes later Henga reported his storming party in position. Then came Andros for a last word or two before the ball opened. The jagged mountains to the eastward were clear-cut against the lightening sky as John with his powder-men and their escort moved silently toward the bridge--now faintly visible in the gloom--to disappear in the formless dark ahead. A sleepy sentry’s hail broke the still silence, and a moment later, as the sandbag party dashed on to the bridge, a wavering torch sprang into light above the battlements to whirl downwards and vanish as one of Wrexham’s party flung himself upon it. Loud shouts and cries above the walls told us that the Shamans had realized that an attack was again afoot, and arrows began to whiz down upon the bridge, striking sparks from the stonework, while above the gates a great beacon flamed into red light, showing the explosive party clustered under the great doors at the far end of the narrow entry-passage. Then back across the bridge, running heads down for dear life among the glancing arrows, came the powder-men. Nine of them we counted--the tenth lay still where he had fallen on the bridge, one limp arm dangling above the dark gulf, the slender arrow-shaft in his back stark black against the stonework, now grey in the growing light. Two minutes later the shrill call of Wrexham’s bugler brought the lighting party racing over the arrow-swept causeway, the last man across spinning forward over the unguarded side, splash into the sluggish stream below, as an arrow took him full in the chest. And as they crossed, the sandbag party came leaping back over the bridge. By some chance seventeen of them returned untouched, though now the full dawn light had come, but the other three lay dead in the passage beyond. John was all right, they told us, and the powder in position. There was now light enough to shoot, and we three opened with our rifles upon the wall above the gates, while away to right and left our bowmen loosed flight after flight of arrows against the packed defences. The dawn silence had given place to a medley of shouts, of high-pitched cries, of clamorous bugle notes, and on the walls in front hurried rush and clash of armed and half-armed men. Then suddenly back in a whirl down the passage came a dozen men, some bleeding from wounds, the bugler with an arrow sticking through his arm, and--thank goodness!--at the back of the bunch, John’s unmistakable sturdy figure with Firoz and the crooked-nosed engineer behind him. They neared the bridge, arrows flying all about them. Then the man in front of Wrexham pitched forward on his face, struggled and lay still. The Sakae engineer tripped over him, went down, and, as he rose again, slid down once more, clutching his leg below the knee, trying to pull out an arrow.