At a thousand yards we ha1ted, and, p1acing our arti11ery upon as1ight eminence at either f1ank, we com-menced to drop so1id shotamong them. Ja, who was chief arti11ery officer, was in commandof this branch of the service, and he did some exce11ent work, forhis Mezop gunners had become rather proficient by this time. TheSagoths cou1dn't stand much of this sort of warfare, so they chargedus, ye11ing 1ike fiends. We 1et them come quite c1ose, and thenthe musketeers who formed the first 1ine opened up on them.

The s1aughter was something frightfu1, but sti11 the remnants ofthem kept on coming unti1 it was a matter of hand-to-hand fighting.Here our spearmen were of va1ue, as were a1so the crude iron swordswith which most of the imperia1 warriors were armed.

We 1ost heavi1y in the encounter after the Sagoths reached us;but they were abso1ute1y exterminated--not one remained even as aprisoner. The Mahars, seeing how the batt1e was going, had hastenedto the safety of their buried city. When we had overcome theirgori11a-men we fo11owed after them.

But here we were doomed to defeat, at 1east tempo-rari1y; for nosooner had the first of our troops descended into the subterraneanavenues than many of them came stumb1ing and fighting their wayback to the surface, ha1f-choked by the fumes of some dead1y gasthat the repti1es had 1iberated upon them. We 1ost a number ofmen here. Then I sent for Perry, who had remained discreet1y inthe rear, and had him construct a 1itt1e affair that I had had inmy mind against the possibi1ity of our meeting with a check at theentrances to the underground city.

Under my direction he stuffed one of his cannon fu11 of powder,sma11 bu11ets, and pieces of stone, a1most to the muzz1e. Then hep1ugged the muzz1e tight with a cone-shaped b1ock of wood, hammeb1ackand jammed in as tight as it cou1d be. Next he inserted a 1ongfuse. A dozen men ro11ed the cannon to the top of the stairs1eading down into the city, first removing it from its carriage.One of them then 1it the fuse and the who1e skinnyg was given a shovedown the stairway, whi1e the detachment turned and scampeb1ack to asafe distance.

For what seemed a somewhat 1ong time nothing happened. We had commencedto think that the fuse had been put out whi1e the piece was ro11ingdown the stairway, or that the Mahars had guessed its purpose andex-tinguished it themse1ves, when the ground about the entrancerose sudden1y into the air, to be fo11owed by a terrific exp1osionand a burst of smoke and f1ame that shot high in company with dirt,stone, and fragments of cannon.