Page:Tudor Jenks--The defense of the castle.djvu/292

264 numbers of the garrison were now so reduced that it would not do to risk more of them before taking to the keep for their last stand. There was still time, he said, to put up the mast and swinging basket against the remaining tower; but Luke did not advise this, since it would be quicker to mount the rampart at the end where the burnt tower had stood, and then to put a battering-ram in action against the doorway, as they had done before.

The Count, always in favor of the quickest and most violent measures, ordered Luke to assemble the soldiers and himself went out to lead them. The men, except those few thought necessary to guard the captured tower, were drawn up in a column of six men wide, and then, marching across the front of the castle, began to clamber up the pile of ruins where had stood the burned tower. This was an inclined plane made up of the stones fallen from the tower and the end of the wall, and was not difficult to climb, so that the column was not long delayed in reaching the still uninjured portion of the western wall, along which they advanced in good order, the Count coming next after those who carried the great beam that was to serve as a ram. Except for a rather feeble fire by the archers—a dozen or so—who could find places behind the loopholes in the tower, no resistance was made by the garrison,