Part 10

But the besieged expected this, and ran out at night their hoards or wooden penthouses on the top of the curtains. The curtains were built with square holes near the top to receive the beams that supported these structures, the true defense of mediæval forts, from which the besieged delivered their missiles with far more freedom and variety of range than they could shoot through the oblique but immovable loopholes of the curtain. On this the besiegers brought up mangonels, and set them hurling huge stones at these wood works and battering them to pieces. At the same time they built a triangular wooden tower as high as the curtain, and kept it ready for use, and just out of shot.

This was a terrible sight to the besieged. These wooden towers had taken many a town. They began to mine underneath that part of the moat the tower stood frowning at; and made other preparations to give it a warm reception. The besiegers also mined, but at another part, their object being to get under the square barbican and throw it down. All this time Denys was behind his mantelet with another arbalester, protecting the workmen and making some excellent shots. These ended by earning him the esteem of an unseen archer, who every now and then sent a winged compliment quivering into his mantelet. One came and stuck within an inch of the narrow slit through which Denys was squinting at the moment.

"Ha! ha!" cried he, "you shoot well, my friend. Come forth and receive my congratulations! Shall merit, such as thine, hide its head? Comrade, it is one of those Englishmen, with his half ell shaft. I'll not die till I've had a shot at London wall."

On the side of the besieged was a figure that soon attracted great notice by promenading under fire. It was a tall knight, clad in complete brass, and carrying a light but prodigiously long lance, with which he directed the movements of the besieged. And when any disaster befell the besiegers, this tall knight and his long lance were pretty sure to be concerned in it.

My young reader will say, "Why did not Denys shoot him?"

Denys did shoot him; every day of his life; other arbalesters shot him; archers shot him. Everybody shot him. He was there to be shot, apparently. But the abomination was, he did not mind being shot. Nay, worse, he got at last so demoralized as not to seem to know when he was shot. At last the besiegers got spiteful, and would not waste any more good steel on him.

It was a bright day, clear, but not quite frosty. The efforts of the besieging force were concentrated against a space of about two hundred and fifty yards, containing two curtains and two towers, one of which was the square barbican, the other had a pointed roof that was built to overlap, and by this means a row of dangerous crenelets between the roof and the masonry grinned down at the nearer assailants, and looked not very unlike the grinders of a modern frigate with each port nearly closed. The curtains were overlapped with penthouses somewhat shattered by the mangonels, and other slinging engines of the besiegers.

On the besiegers' edge of the moat was what seemed at first sight a gigantic arsenal, longer than it was broad, peopled by human ants, and full of busy, honest industry, and displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling up with materials.

At the edge of the moat opposite the wooden tower, a strong penthouse, which they called "a cat," might be seen stealing towards the curtain, and gradually filling up the moat with fascines and rubbish, which the workmen flung out at its mouth. It was advanced by two sets of ropes passing round pulleys, and each worked by a windlass at some distance from the cat. The knight burnt the first cat by flinging blazing tar barrels on it. So the besiegers made the roof of this one very steep, and covered it with raw hides, and the tar barrels could not harm it.

And now the engineers proceeded to the unusual step of slinging fifty-pound stones at an individual.

This catapult was a scientific, simple, and beautiful engine, and very effective in vertical fire at the short ranges of the period.

Imagine a fir tree cut down, and set to turn round a horizontal axis on lofty uprights, but not in equilibrium; three fourths of the tree being on the hither side. At the shorter and thicker end of the tree was fastened a weight of half a ton. This butt end just before the discharge pointed towards the enemy. By means of a powerful winch the long tapering portion of the tree was forced down to the very ground, and fastened by a bolt; and the stone placed in a sling attached to the tree's nose. But this process of course raised the butt end with its huge weight high in the air, and kept it there struggling in vain to come down. The bolt was now drawn; then the short end swung furiously down, the long end went as furiously up, and at its highest elevation flung the huge stone out of the sling with a tremendous jerk. In this case the huge mass so flung missed the knight, but came down near him on the penthouse, and went through it like paper, making an awful gap in roof and floor.

"Aha! a good shot!" cried Baldwyn of Burgundy.

The tall knight retired. The besiegers hooted him. He reappeared on the platform of the barbican, his helmet being just visible above the parapet. He seemed very busy, and soon an enormous Turkish catapult made its appearance on the platform, and, aided by the elevation at which it was planted, flung a twenty-pound stone two hundred and forty yards in the air. The next stone struck a horse that was bringing up a sheaf of arrows in a cart, bowled the horse over dead like a rabbit, and split the cart. It was then turned at the besiegers' wooden tower, supposed to be out of shot. Sir Turk slung stones cut with sharp edges on purpose, and struck it repeatedly, and broke it in several places. The besiegers turned two of their slinging engines on this monster, and kept constantly slinging smaller stones on to the platform of the barbican, and killed two of the engineers. But the Turk disdained to retort. He flung a forty-pound stone on to the besiegers' great catapult, and hitting it in the neighborhood of the axis, knocked the whole structure to pieces, and sent the engineers skipping and yelling.

The next morning an unwelcome sight greeted the besieged. The cat was covered with mattresses and raw hides, and fast filling up the moat. The knight stoned it, but in vain; flung burning tar barrels on it, but in vain. Then with his own hands he let down by a rope a bag of burning sulphur and pitch, and stunk them out. But Baldwyn, armed like a lobster, ran, and bounding on the roof, cut the string, and the work went on. Then the knight sent fresh engineers into the mine, and undermined the place and underpinned it with beams, and covered the beams thickly with grease and tar.

At break of day the moat was filled, and the wooden tower began to move on its wheels towards a part of the curtain on which two catapults were already playing, to breach the hoards and clear the way. There was something awful and magical in its approach without visible agency, for it was driven by internal rollers worked by leverage.

On the top was a platform, where stood the first assailing party protected in front by the drawbridge of the turret, which stood vertical till lowered on to the wall; but better protected by full suits of armor. The besieged slung at the tower, and struck it often, but in vain. It was well defended with mattresses and hides, and presently was at the edge of the moat. The knight bade fire the mine underneath it.

Then the Turkish engine flung a stone of half a hundredweight right amongst the knights, and carried two away with it off the tower on to the plain.

And now the besieging catapults flung blazing tar barrels, and fired the hoards on both sides, and the assailants ran up the ladders behind the tower, and lowered the drawbridge on to the battered curtain, while the catapults in concert flung tar barrels, and fired the adjoining works to dislodge the defenders. The armed men on the platform sprang on the bridge, led by Baldwyn. The invulnerable knight and his men at arms met them, and a fearful combat ensued, in which many a figure was seen to fall headlong down off the narrow bridge. But fresh besiegers kept swarming up behind the tower, and the besieged were driven off the bridge.

Another minute, and the town would have been taken; but so well had the firing of the mines been timed, that just at this instant the underpinnings gave way, and the tower suddenly sank away from the walls, tearing the drawbridge clear and pouring the soldiers off it against the masonry and on to the dry moat.

The besieged uttered a fierce shout, and in a moment surrounded Baldwyn and his fellows; but strange to say, offered them quarter. While a party disarmed and disposed of these, others fired the turret in fifty places with a sort of hand grenades. At this work who so busy as the tall knight? He put fire bags on his long spear, and thrust them into the doomed structure late so terrible. To do this, he was obliged to stand on a projecting beam, holding on by the hand of a pikeman to steady himself. This provoked Denys; he ran out from his mantelet, hoping to escape notice in the confusion, and leveling his crossbow missed the knight clean, but sent his bolt into the brain of the pikeman, and the tall knight fell heavily from the wall, lance and all.

The knight, his armor glittering in the morning sun, fell headlong, but turning as he neared the water, struck it with a slap that sounded a mile off.

None ever thought to see him again. But he fell at the edge of the fascines, and his spear stuck into them under the water, and by a mighty effort he got to the side, but could not get out. Anthony sent a dozen knights with a white flag to take him prisoner. He submitted like a lamb, but said nothing.

[Footnote 1: For explanation of this and similar terms used in this selection, see the notes at the end of this book and especially the word "Castle" in Webster's International Dictionary.]

LOCHINVAR.

LADY HERON'S SONG.

Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west! Through all the wide Border his steed was the best: And, save his good broadsword, he weapons had none; He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopped not for stone; He swam the Esk river, where ford there was none; But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented--the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he entered the Netherby hall, Among bridesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all. Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword, (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word), "Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young lord Lochinvar?"

"I long wooed your daughter--my suit you denied; Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide; And now I am come with this lost love of mine To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."

The bride kissed the goblet, the knight took it up; He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup; She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh, With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar-- "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume; And the bridemaidens whispered, "'Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near; So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! "She is won! We are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur! They'll have fleet steeds that follow!" quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran; There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have you e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

--_From "Marmion," by Sir Walter Scott._

ON A TROPICAL RIVER.

"Westward Ho!" is a novel written by Rev. Charles Kingsley, and first published in 1855. It is a story of the times of Queen Elizabeth, of the threatened invasion of England by the Spanish Armada, and of wild adventure on the sea and in the forests of the New World. Several historical personages are made to appear in the story, such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Hawkins, and others. The hero is Amyas Leigh, "a Devonshire youth of great bodily strength, of lively affection and sweet temper, combined with a marked propensity to combat from his earliest years." Amyas and his companions had undertaken an expedition to discover the fabled golden city of Manoa, which was said to exist somewhere in the wilds of South America. They had been searching more than three years for this city when they reached the Meta River in canoes, and the following adventure occurred.

* * * * *

For three hours or more Amyas Leigh and his companions paddled easily up the glassy and windless reaches, between two green flower-bespangled walls of forest, gay with innumerable birds and insects; while down from the branches which overhung the stream, long trailers hung to the water's edge, and seemed admiring in the clear mirror the images of their own gorgeous flowers. River, trees, flowers, birds, insects,--it was all a fairyland; but it was a colossal one; and yet the voyagers took little note of it.

It was now to them an everyday occurrence to see trees full two hundred feet high one mass of yellow or purple blossom to the highest twigs, and every branch and stem one hanging garden of crimson and orange orchids or vanillas. Common to them were all the fantastic and enormous shapes with which Nature bedecks her robes beneath the fierce suns and fattening rains of the tropic forest. Common were forms and colors of bird, and fish, and butterfly, more strange and bright than ever opium eater dreamed.

The long processions of monkeys, who kept pace with them along the tree tops, and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle and grunt and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar of the jaguar and the rustle of the boa had ceased to move their fear; and when a brilliant green and rose-colored fish, flat-bodied like a bream, flat-finned like a salmon, and sawtoothed like a shark, leaped clean on board of the canoe to escape the rush of a huge alligator (whose loathsome snout, ere he could stop, actually rattled against the canoe), Jack coolly picked up the fish and said:

"He's four pound weight! If you catch fish for us like that, old fellow, just keep in our wake, and we'll give you the cleanings for your wages!"

They paddled onward hour after hour, sheltering themselves as best they could under the shadow of the southern bank, while on their right hand the full sun glare lay upon the enormous wall of mimosas, figs, and laurels, which formed the northern forest, broken by the slender shafts of bamboo tufts, and decked with a thousand gaudy parasites; bank upon bank of gorgeous bloom piled upward to the sky, till where its outline cut the blue, flowers and leaves, too lofty to be distinguished by the eye, formed a broken rainbow of all hues quivering in the ascending streams of azure mist, until they seemed to melt and mingle with the very heavens.

And as the sun rose higher and higher, a great stillness fell upon the forest. The jaguars and the monkeys had hidden themselves in the darkest depths of the woods. The birds' notes died out one by one; the very butterflies ceased their flitting over the tree tops, and slept with outspread wings upon the glossy leaves, undistinguishable from the flowers around them. Now and then a parrot swung and screamed at them from an overhanging bough; or a thirsty monkey slid lazily down a swinging vine to the surface of the stream, dipped up the water in his tiny hand, and started chattering back, as his eyes met those of some foul alligator peering upward through the clear depths below.

In shaded nooks beneath the boughs, rabbits as large as sheep went paddling sleepily round and round, thrusting up their unwieldy heads among the blooms of the blue water lilies; while black and purple water hens ran up and down upon the rafts of floating leaves. The shining snout of a fresh-water dolphin rose slowly to the surface; a jet of spray whirred up; a rainbow hung upon it for a moment; and the black snout sank lazily again.

Here and there, too, upon some shallow pebbly shore, scarlet flamingoes stood dreaming knee-deep on one leg; crested cranes pranced up and down, admiring their own finery; and irises and egrets dipped their bills under water in search of prey; but before noon, even those had slipped away, and there reigned a stillness which might be heard--a stillness in which, as Humboldt says: "If beyond the silence we listen for the faintest undertones, we detect a stifled, continuous hum of insects, which crowd the air close to the earth; a confused swarming murmur which hangs round every bush, in the cracked bark of trees, in the soil undermined by lizards and bees; a voice proclaiming to us that all Nature breathes, that under a thousand different forms life swarms in the gaping and dusty earth, as much as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air which breathes around."

At last a soft and distant murmur, increasing gradually to a heavy roar, announced that they were nearing some cataract; till, turning a point where the alluvial soil rose into a low cliff fringed with delicate ferns, they came in full sight of a scene at which all paused--not with astonishment, but with something very like disgust.

"Rapids again!" grumbled one. "I thought we had had enough of them on the Orinoco!"

"We shall have to get out, and draw the canoes overland, I suppose!"

"There's worse behind; don't you see the spray behind the palms?"

"Stop grumbling, my masters, and don't cry out before you are hurt. Paddle right up to the largest of those islands, and let us look about us."

In front of them was a snow-white bar of foam, some ten feet high, along which were ranged three or four islands of black rock. Each was crested with a knot of lofty palms, whose green tops stood out clear against the bright sky, while the lower half of their stems loomed hazy through a luminous veil of rainbowed mist. The banks right and left of the fall were so densely fringed with a low hedge of shrubs that landing seemed almost impossible; and their Indian guide, suddenly looking round him and whispering, bade them beware of savages, and pointed to a canoe which lay swinging in the eddies under the largest island, moored apparently to the root of some tree.

"Silence, all!" cried Amyas, "and paddle up thither and seize the canoe. If there be an Indian on the island, we will have speech of him. But mind, and treat him friendly; and on your lives, neither strike nor shoot, even if he offers to fight."

So, choosing a line of smooth backwater just in the wake of the island, they drove their canoes up by main force, and fastened them safely by the side of the Indian's, while Amyas, always the foremost, sprang boldly on shore, whispering to the Indian boy to follow him.

Once on the island, Amyas felt sure enough that, if its wild tenant had not seen them approach, he certainly had not heard them, so deafening was the noise which filled his brain, and which seemed to make the very leaves upon the bushes quiver and the solid stone beneath his feet reel and ring. For two hundred yards and more above the fall, nothing met his eye but one white waste of raging foam, with here and there a transverse dike of rock, which hurled columns of spray and surges of beaded water high into the air,--strangely contrasting with the still and silent cliffs of green leaves which walled the river right and left, and more strangely still with the knots of enormous palms upon the islets, which reared their polished shafts a hundred feet into the air, straight and upright as masts, while their broad plumes and golden-clustered fruit slept in the sunshine far aloft, the image of the stateliest repose amid the wildest wrath of Nature.

Ten yards farther, the cataract fell sheer in thunder; but a high fern-fringed rock turned its force away from the beach. Here, if anywhere, was the place to find the owner of the canoe. He leaped down upon the pebbles; and as he did so, a figure rose from behind a neighboring rock, and met him face to face. It was an Indian girl.

He spoke first, in some Indian tongue, gently and smilingly, and made a half-step forward; but quick as light she caught up from the ground a bow, and held it fiercely toward him, fitted with the long arrow, with which, as he could see, she had been striking fish, for a line of twisted grass hung from its barbed head. Amyas stopped, laid down his own bow and sword, and made another step in advance, smiling still, and making all Indian signs of amity. But the arrow was still pointed straight at his breast, and he knew the mettle and strength of the forest nymphs well enough to stand still and call for the Indian boy.

The boy, who had been peering from above, leaped down to them in a moment; and began, as the safest method, groveling on his nose upon the pebbles, while he tried two or three dialects, one of which at last she seemed to understand, and answered in a tone of evident suspicion and anger.

"What does she say?"

"That you are a Spaniard and a robber because you have a beard."

"Tell her that we are no Spaniards, but that we hate them, and are come across the great waters to help the Indians to kill them."

The boy had no sooner spoken, than, nimble as a deer, the nymph had sprung up the rocks, and darted between the palm stems to her own canoe. Suddenly she caught sight of the English boats, and stopped with a cry of fear and rage.

"Let her pass!" shouted Amyas, who had followed her closely. "Push your boats off, and let her pass. Boy, tell her to go on; they will not come near her."