Eighty thousand of their force rushed forward to scale the walls, and that blind ditch of Yodogima's provisioning emptied its waters to make room for the drowning invaders. Others rushed over these and against the embankment, where Sanada stood, his sleepless forces unscathed, to chop and slash them down. For hours they mired and fought, trapped and headless--but to no purpose; every stone's width in that wall had its defender, with another and still others within reach to take his place should chance or fatigue down and disable him. There was no shouting of orders; the word had gone round and around till every man of them knew by heart the role he should enact. Neither had a shot been fired; the guns lay loaded, and the powder unburned, behind still other walls of huger import and loftier building. Practically one-third of Ieyasu's strength--for those scared hirelings did fight, when cornered, quite as stubbornly as the liege master's aged samurai could have done--his most valiant commander, under Hidetada, Maeda, and nearly all of those doubtful daimyos--a few of them yet remained behind Ozaka, still in the semicircle--were either killed, routed, or scared into further uselessness. Nor was this all, for inside the fortifications a newer confidence sprang to the fore, impulse beat harder against the dictates of judgment, and but for Yodogima's influence alone they had rushed one and all thirstily upon the waiting reserves. "Calm yourselves, my friends," urged she, confident in their strength; "if you would follow one victory with another, then buckle your armor the closer. Madness means weakness, and you shall yet have enough to do before Hidetada is worsted; he will not expose his strength under cover of night; he has had better training. And there is Ieyasu, behind him; an inverted pyramid, with both sides blocked by natural barriers. Mind what I say: Ieyasu planned well, but his strategy is ancient; no doubt it served in the days of Confucius, but a new warfare has come; I command you: do not fire a gun, not a man of you, till you can count the teeth, each and everybody in his target's head." They waited; no one would disobey, and only one so much as sold himself--Nanjo, a subordinate captain, for a miserly price ventured to carry Ieyasu's fiefly proposals to Sanada; who scorned the proffered estates, publishing everywhere the traitor's head as an example. Here, at last, Ieyasu, the wise, had found exemplified the truth, to his betterment, that honor and not gold measures the content of highest living. "I am doubtful about an open charge," cautioned he, of Hidetada, as the cover of night began breaking, yet far to the eastward. "I am not," replied the younger man, more doubtful about covers, or chicanery, of any kind. "Then you shall have to face them--I am ill."