For these windows the most of us scrambled at once, foreseeing what must happen. Indeed, the baffled rogues below lost no time over their next move; but running for their muskets, began firing up at the hatch and at the floor under our feet—the boards of which, by the favour of Heaven, were of oak and marvellous solid; also the heavy beams took many of their shot; but none the less they made us skip.
This volley, fired suddenly within, at once, as you may guess, alarmed all the bivouacs in the churchyard. Crowds poured into the church, and word passing that all the eleven prisoners were escaped into the belfry under the spire, other crowds ran back into the street and began firing briskly at the windows. But this helped them nothing, the angle being too steep, and the bullets—or so many of them as found entrance—striking upwards over our heads. By-and-by a few cleverer marksmen climbed to the upper rooms of certain houses around the church, and thence peppered us hotly: yet with no more effect than the others, for by this time I had discovered, by sounding with my heel, where the stout beams ran beneath us. Slipping down from our window-sconces and choosing these beams to stand upon, we were entirely safe from the musketeers outside, and reasonably protected from those below.
"Now the one thing to pray for," whispered Trecarrel to me in a pause of the firing, "is that Lestithiel town contains no second ladder so tall as ours: and I believe it cannot."
"There is another thing to pray for," said I; "which is, that the dawn may come quickly."
He stared at me. "My good Sir, are you crazed?" he demanded. "Day has broke already! What light on earth do you suppose this to be all about us?"
"I took it for the moon," I confessed somewhat shamefacedly.
He burst into a laugh. "You and your friend then must have sped the time rarely with your Scropes and your Grosvenors, your fesses and bends, your counter-paleys and what-not. I can tell you the night dragged by tediously enough for me, that had to lie and listen to your discoursing!"
"But hullo!" said I; "they seem to have ceased firing below. And whose voice is that calling?"
'Twas the voice of the Provost-Marshal summoning us to parley. He had been roused up in haste, and by the tone of his voice was in a towering passion of temper.
"At your service, Sir!" I called out in answer, approaching the trap. "But if you want a parley it must be an honourable one, and no shooting up or catching me at disadvantage."