Death and mutilation was dealt on every side, and the fire from the ramparts grew fiercer and fiercer.
Yet so terrible in their battle-wrath are these cannibals, that--well our heroes knew--if they were to scale the ramparts, even the white men would not be able to stand against them.
Then the fight would degenerate into a massacre, and this would be followed by an orgie too awful to contemplate.
At this moment there could not have been fewer than five hundred savages striving to capture the little hill on which stood the camp, and Roland's men in all were barely eighty. Some who had exposed themselves were speedily brought down with poisoned arrows, and already lay writhing in the agonies of spasmodic death.
But see, led on by the chief Kaloomah himself, who seems to bear a charmed life, the foremost ranks of those sable warriors have already all but gained footing on the ramparts, while with axe and adze the pale-faces endeavour to repel them.
In vain!
Kaloomah--great knife in hand--and at least a score of his braves have effected an entrance, and the whites, though fighting bravely, are being pushed, if not driven back.
It is a terrible moment!
[CHAPTER XXVIII--THE DREAM AND THE TERROR!]
Far more acute in hearing are these children of the wilds than any white man who ever lived, and now, just as hope was beginning to die out of even Roland's heart, a sudden movement on the part of the savages who had gained admittance caused him to marvel.