"Certes, Raymond," exclaimed an archer, "thou dost look like a butcher What hast thou been about?"
"Never mind that: the tale will keep," interrupted the man-at-arms. "I'll warrant we'll all look worse than that ere long! Here, Lightfoot! Away with Ye to the kitchen, and see that plenty of water is put to boil. And you, Ned, fetch an axe and hew off some of this lead and melt it. Methinks the townsmen of Southampton will not amerce us with the damage, whether we hold the tower or not!"
While the preparations for defence were in progress a loud shout from one of the archers gave warning that the enemy were returning to the attack, and the two score Englishmen from the height of the tower looked down upon ten times their number of Picards, Normans, and Spaniards, to whom the assault on a fortress or the sack of a defenceless town were looked upon as ordinary occurrences.
[CHAPTER VIII]
OF THE ASSAULT ON ST. BARBARA'S TOWER
WITH fierce cries and menacing gestures the foreigners rushed down the street, many of them carrying axes and torches, while others bore a stout beam for the purpose of battering down the door of the tower. Their archers and crossbowmen, eager to join in the fray, had slung their bows, and with knives, swords, or short spears in their hands, surged along in a confused mass with the men-at-arms.
"Now! Altogether! Loose, my lads!" shouted old Richard, and with the well-known twang nearly a score of bows sent their missiles crashing into the armed mob below.
Many of the advancing foemen fell, transfixed by the deadly shafts, while those in the rear, pressing blindly forward, stumbled over those who lay writhing on the ground. When, at length, the foremost had reached the base of the tower, where they were safe from the stinging shower, they were met with a stream of molten lead, which, burning through hauberk and leathern jerkin with equal ease, sent the assailants reeling back with screams of agony.
The men bearing the beam were all shot down, and the main body retiring hastily, in a few moments the street was deserted but for a number of corpses, and the solitary standing figure of a man in full armour. Disdaining to turn his back upon the foe, the knight walked slowly backwards, shaking his ponderous mace in speechless anger, while the arrows rattled harmlessly off his proof-plate mail.
"Save your arrows, comrades, and give him a heavy stone or a dose of hot lead should he approach," said old Wyatt. "Methinks I've seen his device before. 'Tis Enrico, son of the King of Sicily."
Just then the prince, his spurred heels tripping on the body of a man-at-arms, fell prostrate on his back, amid a roar of laughter from the Englishmen.