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
feet to run from the shelter on one side to that on the other, and exposed
themselves but for an instant to the aim of the archers. Some of the men
carried great bundles of faggots, others had sacks on their shoulders.
"Do not heed the mantlets in front," said Dickon, who was in command of
the six archers near Guy, "but pick off those fellows as they come down.
Shoot in turn; it is no use wasting two arrows on one man. Don't loose
your shaft until a man is within three mantlets from the end; then if one
misses, the next can take him when he runs across next time. That is
right, Hal," he broke off, as an arrow sped and a man with a sack on his
shoulder rolled over.
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