the castle. Each of his ten knights was followed by an esquire bearing his
banner, and each had ten men-at-arms under his immediate order. Two of
them, with twenty men, remained in the outwork beyond the drawbridge. The
rest took their station on the walls, and towers, where a platform had been
erected, running along three feet below the battlements. The real
men-at-arms with the machines of war now advanced, and for a time worked
the machines, which made pretence at casting great stones and missiles at
the walls. The assailants then moved forward and, unslinging their bows,
opened a heavy fire of arrows at the defenders, who, in turn, replied with
arrows and cross-bows.

"The 'prentices shoot well," the king said; "by our lady, it would be hot
work for the defenders were the shafts but pointed! Even as it is the
knocks must be no child's play, for the arrows, although not pointed, are
all tipped with iron, without which, indeed, straight shooting would be
impossible."

The return fire from the walls was feeble, and the king said, laughing, "So
far your knight, fair mistress, has it all his own way. I did not reckon
sufficiently upon the superiority of shooting of the London lads, and,
indeed, I know not that I ought not in fairness to order some of the
defenders off the walls, seeing, that in warfare, their numbers would be
rapidly thinned. See, the assailants are moving up to the two towers under
shelter of the fire of the archers."

By this time Aylmer, seeing that his followers could make no effectual
reply to the arrow fire, had ordered all, save the leaders in full armour,
to lie down behind the parapet. The assailants now gathered thickly round
each tower, as if they intended to attempt to cross by the bridges, which
could be let down from an opening in the tower level with the top of the