The ascent was arduous; it could not have been made easily in pitch darkness; now it was effected rapidly by the glare of the cataract of falling fire and of blazing rafters.
In ten minutes, with faces streaming, with lungs blowing, the peasants reached the gate-house. They beat at it with stones, with their fists; they drove their pikes at it, but could not open it.
Then a man—it was one of those who had been taken and confined in the castle—bid all stand back. He buckled on to his feet a sort of spiked shoe, with three prongs in each sole, and held a crooked axe in his hand.
"I have not been in there for nothing," laughed he. "I saw what they had for climbing walls, and I've made the like at my forge."
Then he went to the wall, drove in the end of his pick, and in a moment, like a cat, went up from stone course to stone course, till he reached the summit of the wall, when he threw aside his foot-grapnels and leaped within. In the panic caused by the sudden avalanche of stones and fire the sentinel had deserted the gate. The oak doors were cast open, and the whole body of armed men burst in.
They found the small garrison huddled together, paralysed with fear, all their daring, their insolence, their readiness on an occasion gone. They stood like sheep, unable to defend themselves, and were taken without offering any resistance.
The surprise was so complete, the awfulness of the manner in which they were visited was so overwhelming, that the ruffians did not know whether they were not called to their final account, and whether their assailants were not fiends from the flaming abyss.
It had come on them in the midst of sleep when stupefied with drink.
"Follow me!" ordered Ogier, and he led the way through fallen flakes of fire, smouldering beams, and smoking embers, to a portion of the castle that was intact. It consisted wholly of a cavern faced up with stone, and the cataract of fire had not reached it, or had not injured it.
"Bring the prisoners to me," said Ogier. "Where is the Captain? Where is Le Gros Guillem?"