Page:Tudor Jenks--The defense of the castle.djvu/89



Count, seeing that the attack had failed, ordered the recall to be sounded; and it was promptly obeyed. In fact, many of the besiegers began their retreat without the need of any signal. When the retreat was a certainty, Hugh and his men came cautiously out of an opening left in the palisade, and by shooting at those men who were carrying the scaling-ladders and beams, put them to flight. Then, before the retreating men were bold enough to interfere, Hugh and his men destroyed the ladders by chopping them to pieces, and piling up several of the long beams together set fire to them by means of torches of twisted rope coated with pitch and soaked with oil. Hugh himself meanwhile stood on a little eminence to make sure that none of his men were cut off and captured.

When Luke the Lurdane returned from the attack he was too angry to go to the Count. But the Count sent for him, and, seeing his follower's 65