Still, some of them lived, and running under the shelter of the wall, began to breach it with the rude battering rams, and to raise the scaling ladders till death found them, or they were worn out with excitement, fear and labour.
Then the real attack began.

With fierce yells, the threefold column rushed at the wall, and began to work the rams and scale the ladders, while the defenders above showered spears and arrows upon them, or crushed them with heavy stones, or poured upon their heads boiling pitch and water, heated in great cauldrons which stood at hand.
Time after time they were driven back with heavy loss; and, time upon time, fresh hordes of them advanced to the onslaught.

Thrice, at the southern gate, were the ladders raised, and thrice the stormers appeared above the level of the wall, to be hurled back, crushed and bleeding, to the earth beneath.
Thus the long day wore on and still the defenders held their own.
"We shall win," shouted Aziel to Metem, as a fresh ladder was cast down with its weight of men to the death-strewn plain.
"Yes, here we shall win because we fight," answered the Phoenician, "but elsewhere it may be otherwise." Indeed for a while the attack upon the south gate slackened.
Another hour passed and presently to the left of them rose a wild yell of triumph, and with it a shout of "Fly to the second wall.

The foe is in the fosse!" Metem looked and there, down the great ditch, 300 paces to their left, a flood of savages poured towards them.

"Come," he said, "the outer wall is lost." But as he spoke once more the ladders rose against the gates and flanking towers and once more Aziel sprang to cast them down.