No man thought of quarter, nor ceased to stab and thrust until he fell.

Not even then did some of the half-savage combatants desist, and a many a thigh was gashed and boot-protected leg cut to the bone by those murderous hatchet knives wielded by hands which would soon stiffen in death.
When three hundred desperadoes meet fifty of like caliber in a hand-to-hand conflict--when the three hundred mean to end the business, and the fifty know that they must die--fighting for choice, but die in any event--the resultant encounter will surely be both fierce and brief.
And never was fratricidal strife more sanguinary than during the earliest onset within the walls.

Each inch of corridor, each plank of the ballroom floor, was contested with insane ferocity.

This was not warfare.

It savored of the carnage of the jungle.