Messenger after messenger had been dispatched from Cuzco to the coast, and when at length one of them had reached Pizarro in his newly-founded City of the Kings, he had sent an army of four hundred horse and foot to the relief of the sorely beleaguered city. Then the host which had been besieging Lima had drawn back into the mountains, hovering on the Spaniards’ flanks and rear until they had caught them entangled among the narrow, winding mountain-paths and the fearful gorges of the mountains. Then they had cut the bridges and broken down the roads before and behind them. Avalanches of rocks and stones had fallen upon them from inaccessible precipices, clouds of warriors had descended on their nightly camps, and though these had fallen by hundreds under the well-wielded Spanish weapons, in the end the inevitable happened, and of the army which was more than twice as strong as that which had conquered Atahuallpa in Cajamarca, only a few sorely-wounded stragglers had struggled back across the mountains to Lima to tell their tale of disaster and defeat. In the City of the Sun the long weary months had been filled with days and nights of horror. The splendid capital of El-Dorado on which de Soto and his companions had gazed in awe-mingled wonder on that first memorable morning was now a wilderness of blackened and fire-wasted ruins. Day after day the legions of the Inca had flung themselves into its approaches, only to be beaten back with fearful slaughter by the little band of desperate heroes, now less than two hundred strong, who held their camp in the midst of the great square surrounded by the blackened ruins of the palaces and temples which they had first seen glowing with gay colours and shining with gold and silver. Every night the countless watchfires had blazed up in undiminished numbers on the hills about the city and on the towers of the great fortress which loomed dark, threatening, and unscaleable above it. Every hour arrows and darts headed with blazing fire-balls had soared through the air and fallen on the thatched roofs of the buildings and into the fast-emptying magazines of grain, which, saving the horses killed in battle, were all that now stood between the besieged and starvation. Scarcely a day had passed but one or more severed Spanish heads were flung from the battlements of the fortress into the city to tell Hernando Pizarro and his men in what terrible fashion the Inca was keeping his oath, and at last Don Hernando, forgetting all knightly honour and humanity in his desperation, sent out an envoy to say that if he received such another message he would slay every prisoner in his hands.