The Romans lost no whit of their courage. After the taking of Perizaborh they believed in the invincibility of the Emperor, compared him to Alexander the Great, and expected miracles from him. For several days, on the east side of Maogamalki where the rocky steep was less abrupt, soldiers were set to hollow a tunnel. This mine, passing under the walls of the fortress, led up to the centre of the town. The width of the passage--three cubits--allowed two soldiers to proceed abreast. Huge beams at intervals supported the ceiling. The diggers worked gaily. The damp and obscurity seemed delicious to them after the excess of sunlight. "A day or two ago we were frogs and now we're moles," said the soldiers to each other, laughing. Three cohorts, the Mattiarians, Lactiniarians, and Victorians, fifteen hundred picked men, keeping the sternest silence, crawled into the subterranean passage, impatiently waiting orders to burst into the town. At daybreak the attack was expressly directed on two opposite sides, in order to divert the attention of the Persians, and Julian himself led up the soldiers by a single narrow path under a hail of stones and arrows. "We shall see," he said to himself with glee at the danger; "we shall see if the gods preserve me, or if, by a miracle, I shall escape death even now." Some irresistible curiosity, or thirst for the supernatural, urged him to expose himself, and with a defiant smile to challenge Fate to do her worst. It was not death he feared, but only defeat in his purposeless and intoxicating game against the higher powers. The soldiers followed him on, fascinated by and catching the contagion of his mad mood. Meantime the Persians, laughing at the efforts of the besiegers, were singing on the battlements songs in glory of King Sapor, "Son of the Sun." And from the precipitous terraces they shouted to the Romans: "Julian will scale the heavenly palace of Ormuzd before he gets into our fortress!" When the fire of action had risen to its hottest, the Emperor, in a low voice, sent word to his officers on the far side of the city. The legionaries hidden in the tunnel burst out into the interior of the city, and found themselves in the cellar of a house where an old Persian woman was kneading bread. She uttered a piercing cry at the sight of the Roman legionaries, and was promptly killed. Then, gliding unperceived, they threw themselves on the rear of the besieged. The Persians flung down their arms, and scattered into the streets. The Romans then rushed to the city gates, and by the double assault the town was taken. From that moment not a legionary doubted that the Emperor, like Alexander of Macedon, would conquer the whole of the Persian Empire as far as the Indies.