In the forward movement in response to these loudly-uttered words fearful cries of rage and despair mingled with hoarse shouts of the vanquished. Rifles flashed everywhere in the faint morning light, bullets kept up a singing chorus above our heads, and about me, in the frightful tumult, gleamed naked blood-stained blades. At first the guards, like those in the outer court, made a desperate resistance, but soon they showed signs of weakness, and I could distinguish in the faint grey dawn how gradually we were driving them back, slowly gaining the entrance to the court, which, I remembered, was a very large and beautiful one with cool colonnades, handsome fountains and beautiful flowering trees of a kind I had never seen in England.
At last, after a fierce struggle, in which the defenders very nearly succeeded in driving us out or slaughtering us where we stood, the field-pieces were silenced, a charge of explosive was successfully placed beneath the gate and a loud roar followed that shook every stone in that colossal pile.
The ponderous door was shattered and the defenders disorganised by the suddenness of the disaster. Almost before they were aware of it we had poured in among them. Then the slaughter was renewed, and the scenes witnessed on every hand frightful to behold.
Kona and his black followers fought like demons, spearing the soldiers right and left, always in the van of the fray. Omar and Kona were apparently sharing the direction of the attack, for sometimes I heard the voice of one raised, giving orders, and sometimes the other. But, however irregular the mode of proceeding might have been from a military standpoint, success was ours, for half an hour later the two inner courts, strenuously defended by the Naya's body guard, were taken, and judging from the fact that the firing outside had become desultory it seemed as though hostilities in the streets had practically ceased.
At this juncture some man, a tall, powerful fellow who was distinguishing himself by his valiant deeds, told me that the military down in the city, finding the populace so strong, had, after a most terrific fight, at last ceased all opposition and declared in favour of the Prince Omar. This, we afterwards discovered, was the actual truth. The carnage in the streets had, however, been appalling, before this step had been resolved upon, but when once the declaration had been made, the remnants of the Naya's army were, at the orders of the leaders of the people, marched without the city wall on the opposite side to the great cliff, and there halted to await the progress of events.
Meanwhile, we were still hewing our way, inch by inch, towards the centre of the palace of the Great White Queen. So desperate was the conflict that the perspiration rolled from us in great beads, and many of my comrades fell from sheer exhaustion, and were trampled to death beneath the feet of the wildly-excited throng.
Soon, driving back the final ring of defenders, and shooting them down to the last man, we dashed across the central court, where the polished marble paving ran with blood, and battering down the great gilded doors, that fell with a loud crash, gained our goal, entering the spacious Hall of Audience, in the centre of which, upon its raised daïs, under the great gilded dome, stood the historic Emerald Throne.
The magnificent hall was deserted. The bloodshed had been frightful. The courts were heaped with dead and dying. Several chairs were lying overturned, as if the courtiers and slaves had left hastily, and even across the seat of royalty one of the Naya's rich bejewelled robes of state had been hastily flung down. This, snatched up by one of the Dagombas, was tossed away into the crowd, who gleefully tore it to shreds as sign that the power of the dreaded Naya was for ever broken.
To the exultant shouts of a thousand wild, blood-bespattered people, the great hall echoed again and again. The faint light showed too plainly at what terrible cost the victory had been won. Their clothes were torn, their faces were blackened by powder, from their superficial wounds blood was oozing, while the more serious consequences of sword-cuts and gun-shots had been hastily bound by shreds of garments. Flushed by their victory, they were a strange, forbidding-looking rabble. Yet they were our partisans; a peaceful, law-abiding people who had been oppressed by a tyrannical rule and long ripe for revolt, they had seized this opportunity to break the power of the cruel-hearted woman who was unworthy to hold sway upon that historic throne.
"Let us seek the Naya! She shall not escape! Let us avenge the deaths of our fathers and children!" were the cries raised when they found the Hall of Audience deserted. Apparently they had expected to find the Great White Queen seated there, awaiting them, and their chagrin was intense at finding her already a fugitive.