Raymond felt a warm stream trickle down his arm, and found, to his surprise, that he had received a clean cut on his left shoulder. How or when it occurred he was unable to understand, for in the heat of the struggle he had been blind to his surroundings and the sense of pain.
The rest of the garrison all showed signs of the tremendous odds. Buckland was gashed across the forehead by an arrow, while his hands were bruised and bleeding from the effects of his struggle with the knight at the window.
Walter Bevis was sitting in a corner of the room, trying to extricate a crossbow shaft that had all but buried itself in the upper part of his right leg, and in spite of the excruciating pain was slowly drawing out the barbed head, muttering the while prayers to the Virgin and his patron saints.
The others, having bound up their slighter injuries, cheered the sufferer, and in response to his entreaties, withdrew the bolt. A gush of blood followed, and the man, unable to bear the agony, fainted. Hastily applying a bandage, with the rude knowledge of surgery that they possessed, his comrades left him and returned to their posts to await the next assault.
"Certes! They do not mean to let us be," exclaimed Redward; "it passeth my understanding why they should waste time and many lives in attempting to take our little fortress. Courage, my friends! Another repulse and they will leave us in peace."
But, notwithstanding his repeated encouragements, the master-bowman looked doubtfully on the new phase of the attack. A party of men were bringing a huge mangonel ashore from one of the galleys, and setting it in position, prepared to bombard the house with heavy stones, each capable of tearing a jagged hole in the stonework. At the same time, the French archers advanced on all sides with wisps of burning tow affixed to the heads of their arrows.
At a score paces from the house stood a solitary gnarled trunk of a dead tree, and towards this the bowman cast a hasty yet anxious glance. Then noting with satisfaction that the little wind there was blew from that direction, he gave a sigh of relief.
In the meanwhile the men about the mangonel had set the powerful spring, and a mass of rock lay poised on the gigantic spoon, awaiting only the release of the engine to cast the deadly missile towards the doomed house.
In terrible suspense the garrison crouched behind the stoutest part of the masonry, expecting each moment to find the huge stone crashing over their heads.
The noise of the spring as it was released could be distinctly heard, then with a whirlwind of dust the stone struck the ground at a short distance from the house and rolled harmlessly against the wall.