At each of the sixty towers along the stretch of the wall were stationed some twenty men--a force of nearly twelve hundred in all. Everson foresaw that these in all probability, or most of them, would come to the breach from either side, leaving but few soldiers to man the towers. So he sent two parties of a thousand men each east and west, to lie in the forests near the wall. These were heavy-armed swordsmen and spearsmen. They bore long ladders with them, and it was to be their task to scale the wall, flank the men of Bel-Ar at its summit, and take and hold the watchtowers. A few miles below the wall lay a Maeronican hilltown, and there Bel-Ar maintained a prominent garrison, composed of a section of his standing army, some ten thousand men strong. These soldiers had proved the bane of many a Rutharian raiding party, and they now gave Everson much trouble in his mind. If they should come up quickly to the wall and drive back his force or retake the towers, his thrust would be all but ill delivered and fail of much of its power. That must be chanced--and he judged by the look of these fighting men of Ruthar that they would stand considerable driving and still not be driven. Silently the long lines stole into position, and the men sank out of sight among the trees. A small patrol party of Maeronican soldiers rode down the wall from the watchtower to the west, where the mitzl lights burned pale against the sky. They passed on, met the patrol from the east, and both returned--seeing nothing of the menace that lay hidden in the shadows of the pines. Ruthar had been quiet of late, and a few noises in the forest meant nothing to these soldiers, strong in their position on the mighty wall. Of such things as the pastries of Zenas Wright they had never even dreamed. In a clump of trees Everson attached his wires to his batteries. He knelt by one of them, and five of his sappers knelt with him. "One--two--_three_!" he counted. The six poised hands fell as one. For a moment, silence; then a burst of hell from the bowels of the earth. From end to end, down all its length, the roof of Everson's subterranean gallery was torn out by the rending gases. From the mouth of the tunnel a mass of rocks, beams and loose earth was belched down the slope with such force that trees fell before it. Through clouds of falling earth and a drift of smoke, the distended eyes of the Rutharian soldiery saw the basalt structure of the Kimbrian Wall that had stood firm for thirty centuries heave up, sunder, and open, as a gate opens, then come thundering down to ruin. Right in the midst of the chaos of falling rock an awful sheet of green flame arose like a giant fan and stood for an instant against the sky.