“Ho there, lads!” cried the archer to three others who were lounging about the courtyard, “come and aid me and Peter Gateward to drag in this load, since these lazy fellows find it too hard for them!”
But as he spoke, down he went, felled to the earth as if crushed by a falling mountain; and the foremost peasant, flinging off his coarse frock, appeared in full armour. A tall man beside him, doing the same, uttered a cry like the howl of a wolf, which was instantly answered by the bursting of a throng of armed men from their ambush in the thickets below.
The next moment the three other archers and the porter fell in turn; but the staunch old warder, mortally hurt as he was, had clutched with his dying hand the cord of the alarm-bell, and rung a peal that startled the whole garrison. The first men who came panting up made a frantic effort to let fall the portcullis; but the piled-up wood checked it midway, and in a moment more the shouting assailants burst in like a wave, echoing their leader’s war-cry of “Notre Dame, Du Guesclin!”
Surprised, half-armed, without a leader, most of the English were beaten down and made prisoners almost ere they could draw weapon. A few made a desperate stand in the inner gateway, and fairly hemmed in Du Guesclin and the Black Wolf, who had charged headlong through it; but the two leaders, standing grimly back to back against them all, held their own till their men, having cleared the courtyard, came rushing to their aid; and so the castle was won.
But hardly was all over, when a distant trumpet blast came echoing from below, and the English commandant and his men were seen returning with their booty, in a careless, straggling fashion that told its own tale to Bertrand’s keen eye.
Wounded as he was by a severe slash in the face, the hero sallied out upon them at once with a body of picked men, disguised in the dress of their English captives; and the trick was perfectly successful. The commandant himself fell by Du Guesclin’s hand, and few of his men escaped death or capture.
“Well, lads,” cried Bertrand, as he and his wild recruits sat down to the meal prepared for the English leader, with many a hoarse laugh at this complete turning of the tables, “ye have right gallantly begun your new service, and a new service deserveth a new name. Henceforth let all men call ye ‘Du Guesclin’s Woodmen.’”
“THE SHOUTING ASSAILANTS BURST IN”
And the ex-outlaws, with shouts of approving laughter, accepted the title that was to make them famous in history.