Flavian’s figure straightened suddenly as it leant bowed in thought upon the sword. He was alert and vigilant, staring into darkness that baffled vision and hid the unknown. A dull, characterless sound was in the air. Whether it was the wind, the sea, or something more sinister, he could not tell. Calling one of his knights to his side, they stood together listening on the wreckage of the wall. A vague clink, clink, came in discord to the wind, a sound that suggested the cautious moving of armed men. A hoarse voice was growling warily in the distance, as though giving orders. The shrilling noise of steel grew more obvious each moment; the black void below appeared to grow full of movement, to swirl and eddy like a lagoon, whose muddy waters are disturbed by some huge reptile at night. The sudden hoarse cries of sentinels rose from the walls. Feet stumbled on the debris at the base of the breach; stormers were on the threshold of Gambrevault. A trumpet blared in the entry; the guard closed up on the rampart; sleeping men started from the shadows of the wall, seized sword and shield as the trumpets’ bray rang in their ears. Colgran’s stormers, discovered in their purpose, cast caution to the winds, and sent up a shout that should have wakened all Gambrevault. In the darkness and the driving rain, neither party could see much of the other. The stormers came climbing blindly up the pile of wreckage in serried masses. Flavian and his knights, who held the rampart, big men and large-hearted, smote at the black tide of bodies that rolled to their swords. It was grim work in the dark. It was no sleepy, disorderly rabble that held the breach, but a tense line of steel, that stemmed the assault like a wall. The stormers pushed up and up, to break and deliquesce before those terrible swords. Modred’s deep voice sounded through the din, as he smote with his great axe, blows that would have shaken an oak. There was little shouting; it was breathless work, done in earnest. Colgran’s men showed pluck, fought well, left a rampart of dead to their credit, a squirming, oozing barrier, but came no nearer forcing the breach. They had lost the propitious moment, and the whole garrison was under arms, ready to repulse the attacks made at other points. Scaling ladders had been jerked forward and reared against the walls; men swarmed up, but the rebels gained no lasting foothold on the battlements. They were beaten back, their ladders hurled down, masonry toppled upon the mass below. Many a man lay with neck or back broken in the confused tangle of humanity at the foot of the castle.