loud orders from the leaders of the various assaulting parties, and the
objects before but dimly seen, now approached the walls rapidly. Jean
Bouvard hurried away to superintend the defence at other parts.

"You may as well go the other way, Guy, and let me know from time to time
how things are getting on. Henry, run down to your mother and tell her
that the enemy are moving up to the moat, and that it will be some time
before there is any hard fighting; then come back here again."

It was easier to see from the side walls than it had been in front, for in
front there was a glow in the sky from the number of fires burning beyond
the crest of the slope, and Guy was able to make out what seemed to him a
wall extending some fifteen yards, near the edge of the moat. The archers
and crossbow-men gathered opposite to it had just begun to shoot. Behind
this wall there were other dark masses irregularly placed, and extending
back as far as he could see. An occasional cry told that the arrows were
doing execution upon the unseen assailants behind the mantlets, and soon
the blows of cross-bow bolts against the wall and the sharp tap of arrows
told that the enemy had also betaken themselves to their arms. A number of
giant torches had been prepared, consisting of sheafs of straw soaked with
pitch, and one of these was now lighted and elevated on a pole some
fifteen feet above the battlement. Its light was sufficient to enable the
scene beyond to be clearly made out. A row of mantlets some eight feet
high had been placed by the moat, and others of the same height, and seven
or eight feet long, elevated at short intervals behind these, were so
placed as to afford shelter to the men coming down to the mantlets in
front. They stood in two lines; they were some twenty feet apart, but
those in one line alternated with those in the other. Guy soon saw the
object of this arrangement. Men were darting to and fro across the
interval some six feet wide between the two lines. Thus they had but ten