Close behind Carvahal came Hernando de Soto and Juan Pizarro followed by a score of men shouting the familiar war-cry. For some minutes they were checked by the solid mass of warriors which had poured down from the second terrace to oppose them, and so close was the press that they could scarcely find room to use their weapons. They were even driven back a few feet by the sheer weight of the crowd descending upon them; but meanwhile ben-Alcazar and his comrades had been hacking and hewing away at the Peruvian flank, more ladders had been planted against the outer wall; the archers and arquebusiers had left their position as soon as there was danger of their volleys injuring friends as well as foes, and they too had joined in the desperate escalade. Again and again the ladders were hurled away from the wall by the ever-increasing throngs of warriors who came pouring down from the upper terraces, and again and again they were up-reared, until, one by one, the climbing columns of men gained the summit of the first rampart and made good their footing. Some drew their weapons and turned fiercely on the swarming defenders while others dragged the ladders up in readiness for the assault on the second line. Before long ben-Alcazar had nearly forty men behind him, and, forming these into a solid wedge of steel and iron, he drove them deep into the flank of the column that was still holding the assailants of the gate in check. For a few moments it stuck fast as though locked in and overwhelmed by the swarm of men into which it had driven itself. Then the wedge began to move slowly forward again, and then the column burst asunder, half of it scattered flying up the slope and the other half fast shut in between the wedge and the gate. Now the wedge dissolved and spread out into a double line, and between this and the head of the Spanish column coming through the gate the Peruvian warriors were entrapped. They had no more chance against the steel-clad Spanish soldiery than a mob of children would have had against themselves, but they went down to the last man fighting and dying like heroes, and when the bloody, pitiless work was over the Gate of Sand was won, and the hitherto inviolate fortress was impregnable no longer. CHAPTER XII. THE FIGHT FOR THE FORTRESS Juan Pizarro now divided his men into three companies commanded by himself, de Soto, and ben-Alcazar, and planted the archers and arquebusiers in positions from which they could rake the second terrace with their volleys, but the storming of this was harder work than the forcing of the gate had been, for the wall was high and smooth and the few and narrow openings in it had been built up almost as solidly as the wall itself. It presented an unbroken series of angles, and above these huge heaps of stones had been piled, and hence the moment a ladder was planted those who attempted to mount it were exposed to attack not only from the top but from both sides as well.