the remnant of feeling left in him, but his last hold on life was gone.
Scarce had the messengers ceased speaking when the guard from the watch
tower broke in to say that the legions were advancing on the citadel.
Then a captain came to report that his soldiers had been bribed by the
enemy. Hated by his own followers, with half-hearted officers who knew
they were on the losing side, with fear written on every countenance,
Akish realized that he had lost, before the enemy had raised a spear.
"At least we'll die with harness on our back," and he motioned for an
attendant to get down his armor from the wall, and, as the boys' hands
shook, he kicked him for a coward, and stooped and fastened the straps
himself. He ordered his chariot, and when seated on high, the gates
were thrown back. Like a bull who charges the toreadors, he glanced
over the plain, which, as far as the eye could see, was alive with
plumed warriors. His whip sang out over the heads of the horses, and,
undaunted to the end, he plunged into the maelstrom to his death.
(THE END.)
End of Project Gutenberg's The Cities of the Sun, by Elizabeth Rachel Cannon