Set on a hundred wheels, the rolling masse On the smooth lands went nimbly up and downe, Though full of armes, and armed men it was, Yet with small pains it ran as it had flowne; Wondered the camp so quick to see it passe, They praised the workmen, and their skill unknowne; And on that day two towres they builded more, Like that which sweet Clorinda burnt before.[18] * * * * * The archers shotte their arrowes sharpe and keene, Dipt in the bitter juyce of poyson strong; The shady face of heaven was scantly seen, Hid with the cloud of shafts and quarries long; Yet weapons sharp with greater fury beene Cast from the towres the Pagan troops among; For thence flew stones, and clifts of marble rocks, Trees shod with iron, timber, logs, and blocks. A thunderbolt seemed every stone; it brake His limmes and armour so on whom it light, That life and soule it did not only take, But all his face and shape disfigured quight: The lances staid not in the wounds they make, But through the gored body tooke their flight From side to side; through flesh, through skin and rinde They flew, and flying left sadde death behinde. But yet not all this force and fury drove The Pagan people to forsake the walle, But to revenge these deadly blowes they strove With darts that flie, with stones and trees that fall; For need so cowards oft courageous prove, For liberty they fight, for life, for all, And oft with arrows, shafts, and stones that flie, Give bitter answer to a sharp replie. This while the fierce assailants never cease, But sternly still maintaine a threefold charge, And ’gainst the cloud of shafts draw nigh at ease, Under a pentise made of many a targe; The armed towres close to the bulwarks prease, And strive to grapple with the battled marge, And launch their bridges out; mean while below With iron fronts, the rammes the walls down throwe. (68–71.) Rinaldo, according to the romancer, raises a ladder, and scales the walls single–handed; but Godfrey of Bouillon, who is present in one of the towers, finds greater obstacles:— For there not man with man, nor knight with knight Contend, but engines there with engines fight. For in that place the Paynims reared a post Which late had served some gallant ship for mast, And over it another beam they crost, Pointed with iron sharpe, to it made fast With ropes, which as men would the dormant tost Now in, now out, now backe, now forward cast; In his swift pullies oft the men withdrew The tree, and oft the riding balke forth threw.