As fast as these were used, more houses were pulled down, until the defence was completed, the crossbars being some nine inches apart.
This work performed, the men, women and children brought up what provisions they had, and their most precious belongings.

These were carried inside the wall of the palace.

It was two o'clock before the work was finished, and there was then a rest for half an hour.
Then all were set to work to dig a trench, three feet deep with perpendicular sides, at a distance of two feet from the palisade.

A large store of bamboos that had been too slender for use in the palisade were sharpened, and cut into lengths of two feet; and these were planted, thickly, in the bottom of the trench.

Others, five feet long, were sharpened and then thrust through the interstices between the upright bamboos; the ends being fixed firmly in the ground inside, while the sharpened points projected like a row of bayonets, at a height of some two feet above the edge of the ditch.
It was nightfall before the work was finished.