It wanted an hour or two of midnight when my man Stubbs came to me from his outpost on the walls, and told me that the fleet of rafts and hide-boats had put forth from the shore, and was approaching in a ghostly silence. Now I have never held it a part of valiancy in a true warrior to oppose himself to invincible odds. My men being so few and weak, ’twas against reason that they should withstand a more numerous foe, who, taught by precedent mishap, would without question avoid their former errors, and, covered by the darkness, set up their ladders more thickly than we could counter. I shrank from throwing lives away vainly, and saw that we must abandon our outer rampart, and shut ourselves within the keep, whereto there was but one entrance, from the courtyard, and behind whose massy door I thought we should be safe. Accordingly I gathered all my company and withdrew them into the keep, barring the door with my own hand, and I sent the men into the watch-house above the door, bidding them hurl their missiles upon the heads of the enemy when they should make to assault us. My prescience was approved ere many minutes were past. Looking from a window in the keep, I saw the wall thick with dark shapes mounting from innumerable ladders, and leaping down into the courtyard with scarce a sound. Some of them turned about, and began to haul on ropes, and there came over the wall two or three of their rafts, whereat I wondered, not divining what purpose these could serve. But in a little I saw their cunning device, for the Irishmen hoisted the rafts upon their shoulders, and employing them in the manner of what the Romans called a testudo, advanced, thus defended, towards the door of the keep. The missiles launched on them from above bounded off from those broad shields, as I knew by hearing rather than sight, for being now come within the shadow of the keep they were no longer visible. Expecting a vehement onset upon the door, I ran down and posted myself with Stubbs and two or three more at the foot of the stairway. Mistress O’Hagan, in defiance of my express charge, had not taken refuge upon the roof with her household women, but stayed in a little room hard by the first winding of the stair. As it fell out, this flat obstinacy turned to our advantage.