At half-past eight in the morning we were driven back over the open ground to our last entrenchment, a very strong one just outside of the eastern gate of the temple which, it will be remembered, was set in a tunnel pierced through the natural lava rock.  Thrice did the Black Kendah come on and thrice we beat them off, till the ditch in front of the wall was almost full of fallen.  As fast as they climbed to the top of it the White Kendah thrust them through with their long spears, or we shot them with our rifles, the nature of the ground being such that only a direct frontal attack was possible.

In the end they drew back sullenly, having, as we hoped, given up the assault.  As it turned out, this was not so.  They were only resting and waiting for the arrival of their reserve.  It came up shouting and singing a war-song, two thousand strong or more, and presently once more they charged like a flood of water.  We beat them back.  They reformed and charged a second time and we beat them back.

Then they took another counsel.  Standing among the dead and dying at the base of the wall, which was built of loose stones and earth, where we could not easily get at them because of the showers of spears which were rained at anyone who showed himself, they began to undermine it, levering out the bottom stones with stakes and battering them with poles.

In five minutes a breach appeared, through which they poured tumultuously.  It was hopeless to withstand that onslaught of so vast a number.  Fighting desperately, we were driven down the tunnel and through the doors that were opened to us, into the first court of the temple.  By furious efforts we managed to close these doors and block them with stones and earth.  But this did not avail us long, for, bringing brushwood and dry grass, they built a fire against them that soon caught the thick cedar wood of which they were made.

While they burned we consulted together.  Further retreat seemed impossible, since the second court of the temple, save for a narrow passage, was filled with corn which allowed no room for fighting, while behind it were gathered all the women and children, more than two thousand of them.  Here, or nowhere, we must make our stand and conquer or die.  Up to this time, compared with what which we had inflicted upon the Black Kendah, of whom a couple of thousand or more had fallen, our loss was comparatively slight, say two hundred killed and as many more wounded.  Most of such of the latter as could not walk we had managed to carry into the first court of the temple, laying them close against the cloister walls, whence they watched us in a grisly ring.