The English summons to surrender was treated by Kirkaldy with scorn. Up went a scarlet banner, significant of death and defiance, on the great tower of King David. Indomitable, as in the days of his early youth, when the confederates of St Andrews defied the universe in arms, the Scottish champion looked calmly from his rock on the preparations for the terrible assault. Five batteries were erected around the castle, but not with impunity. The cannon of Kirkaldy mowed down the pioneers when engaged in their trenching operations; and it was not until Trinity Sunday, the 17th of May, that the besiegers opened their fire. "At two o'clock in the afternoon, the five batteries opened a simultaneous discharge upon the walls of the castle. Bravely and briskly its cannoneers replied to them, and deep-mouthed Mons Meg, with her vast bullets of black whin, the thundering carthouns, basilisks, serpents, and culverins, amid fire and smoke, belched their missiles from the old gray towers, showering balls of iron, lead, and stone at the batteries; while the incessant ringing of several thousand harquebusses, calivers, and wheel-lock petronels, added to the din of the double cannonade. From the calibre of the great Mons Meg, which yet frowns _en barbe_ over the ramparts, one may easily imagine the dismay her enormous bullets must have caused in the trenches so far below her. "For ten days the furious cannonade continued, on both sides, without a moment's cessation. On the 19th, three towers were demolished, and enormous gaps appeared in the curtain walls; many of the castle guns were dismounted, and destroyed by the falling of the ancient masonry: a shot struck one of the largest culverins fairly on the muzzle, shattering it to pieces, and scattering the splinters around those who stood near. A very heavy battery was discharged against King David's Tower, a great square bastel-house, the walls of which were dark with the lapse of four centuries. On the 23d, a great gap had been beaten in its northern side, revealing the arched hall within; and as the vast old tower, with its cannon, its steel-clad defenders, and the red flag of defiance still waving above its machicolated bartizan, sank with a mighty crash to shapeless ruin, the wild shriek raised by the females in the castle, and the roar of the masonry rolling like thunder down the perpendicular rocks, were distinctly heard at the distant English camp."