o ye
call yourselves cross-bowmen and let these two dogs keep their station
under the walls of the castle? Heave over the coping stones from the
battlement, an better may not be. Get pick-ax and levers and down with
that huge pinnacle!" pointing to a heavy piece of stone-carved work that
projected from the parapet.

At this moment Locksley whipped up the courage of his men.

"Saint George for England!" he cried. "To the charge, bold yeomen! Why
leave ye the good knight and noble Cedric to storm the pass alone? Make
in, yeomen! The castle is taken. Think of honor; think of spoil. One
effort and the place is ours."

With that he bent his good bow and sent a shaft right through the breast
of one of the men-at-arms, who, under De Bracy's direction, was
loosening a fragment from one of the battlements to precipitate on the
heads of Cedric and the Black Knight. A second soldier caught from the
hands of the dying man the iron crow, with which he had heaved up and
loosened the stone pinnacle, when, receiving an arrow through his
headpiece, he dropped from the battlement into the moat a dead man. The
men-at-arms were daunted, for no armor seemed proof against the shot of
this tremendous archer.

"Do you give ground, base knaves?" cried De Bracy. "[v]_Mountjoy Saint
Dennis_! Give me the lever."

Snatching it up, he again assailed the loosened pinnacle, which was of
weight enough, if thrown down, not only to have destroyed the remnant of
the drawbridge, which sheltered the two foremost assailants, but also to
have sunk the rude float of planks over which they had crossed. All saw
the danger, and the boldest, even the stout friar himself, avoided
setting a foot on the raft. Thrice did Locksley bend his shaft against
De Bracy, and thrice did his arrow bound back from the knight's armor of
proof.

"Curse on thy Spanish steel-coat!" said Locksley; "had English smith
forged it, these arrows had gone through it as if it had been silk." He
then began to call out: "Comrades! friends! noble Cedric! bear back and
let the ruin fall."

His warning voice was unheard, for the din which the Black Knight
himself occasioned by his strokes upon the postern would have drowned
twenty war-trumpets. The faithful Gurth indeed sprang forward on the
planked bridge to warn Cedric of his impending fate, or to share it with
him. But his warning would have come too late; the massive pinnacle
already tottered, and De Bracy, who still heaved at his tas