After a time Walter from the summit saw several bodies of men detach themselves from the crowd still without the castle and proceed into the country. Two hours later they were seen returning laden with trunks of trees. These were dragged through the breach, and were, in spite of the efforts of the archers and of the men-at-arms with their stones, placed so as to form a sort of penthouse against one side of the keep. Numbers of the soldiers now poured up with sacks and all kinds of vessels which they had gathered from the surrounding villages, filled with earth. This was thrown over the beams until it filled all the crevices between them and formed a covering a foot thick, so that neither boiling oil nor water poured from above could penetrate to injure those working beneath its shelter. When all was ready a strong body armed with picks and crowbars entered the penthouse and began to labor to cut away the wall of the keep itself.
"Their commander knows his business," Walter said, "and the device is an excellent one. We can do nothing, and it only depends upon the strength of the wall how long we can hold out. The masonry is by no means good, and before nightfall, unless aid comes, there will be naught for us but death or surrender."
CHAPTER XVI.
A PRISONER.
As long as it was light an anxious lookout was kept from the top of the keep toward Calais. There was nothing to be done. The besiegers who had entered the walls were ensconced in the various buildings in the court-yard or placed behind walls so as to be out of arrow-shot from above, and were in readiness to repel any sortie which might be made to interfere with the work going on under the penthouse. But no sortie was possible, for to effect this it would be necessary to remove the stones from the door, and before this could be accomplished the besiegers would have rallied in overwhelming force, nor could a sortie have effected anything beyond the slaying of the men actually engaged in the work. The beams of the penthouse were too strong and too heavily weighted with earth to be removed, and the attempt would only have entailed useless slaughter. The penthouse was about forty feet in length, and the assailants were piercing three openings, each of some six feet in width, leaving two strong supporting pillars between them. Anxiously the garrison within listened to the sounds of work, which became louder and louder as the walls crumbled before the stroke of pickax and crowbar.
"I shall hold out until the last moment," Walter said to Ralph, "in hopes of relief, but before they burst in I shall sound a parley. To resist further would be a vain sacrifice of life."
Presently a movement could be seen among the stones, and then almost simultaneously two apertures appeared. The chamber into which the openings were made was a large one, being used as the common room of the garrison. Here twenty archers and the remaining men-at-arms—of whom nearly one-half had fallen in the defense of the breach—were gathered, and the instant the orifices appeared the archers began to send their arrows through them. Then Walter ascended to another chamber, and ordered the trumpeter to sound a parley.
The sound was repeated by the assailants' trumpeter.
"Who commands the force?" Walter asked.