“Take a dozen horsemen,” said he to an aide, “and ascertain if the vestals are safe. If so, we will send a strong guard to prevent further disorder and then retreat; for it is not seemly to fight our brethren.”
As rapidly as possible, reconnoitering parties were dispatched to discover the damage done and to provide suitable care for the killed and wounded. To this day the native American races make strenuous efforts to prevent their dead from falling into the hands of an enemy.
The defeated troops were ordered back to quarters and Setos was seized and brought before Yermah.
“Back into thy houses under penalty of arrest!” shouted the mounted patrol, as they galloped through the streets, and rode down the turbulent mob. Soon the cry went up:
“Setos is in chains! Run for thy life!” This startling news sent the crowd flying in every direction, until even the stout-hearted seemed paralyzed by the result, and the defeated ones slunk away to their homes, like children caught in an act of disobedience.
The men were secretly humiliated and ashamed, none of that generation having ever been guilty of insurrection, and they stood aghast at sight of the carnage and slaughter.
The shamans and priestesses ministered to the wounded and dying, and many heart-rending scenes were enacted on the spot where some turbulent spirit had received its quietus.
The marketplace and temple walls were gallantly defended and by nightfall comparative order reigned in the city itself, though heavy firing from the forts told of the strife along the banks of the canal.
Imos, aided by a band of fanatical warrior-priests, was doing all in his power to destroy the fleet. Hanabusa was retreating slowly with his shattered forces, but every inch of the ground was being stubbornly contested. As darkness came on, the balsas slipped by unobserved, and Hanabusa steered for the Camp of Mars with less than half of his original numbers.
The battering-rams and catapults had done deadly work on the feebly defended Camp of Mars. Here the flood-gates of the canal had been opened by a band of marauding insurgents, under cover of the darkness, and the rising tide inundated the whole plain.