Now and then a silence more appalling than sound would settle over all. Men seized each other by the throat, and then were heard fierce pantings, followed by gnashings of teeth, death-rattles and imprecations, and directly all the din returned again. A stream of blood flowed through the breach in the tower, and spreading in the gloom, formed a dark, smoking pool outside upon the grass. [Illustration 117] One might have said that the tower herself was bleeding like a wounded giantess. Surprising to relate, all this tumult was hardly audible on the outside. The night was very dark, and around the besieged fortress an almost funereal sense of peace rested on forest and plain. Hell was within, a sepulchre without. This life-and-death struggle in the darkness, these volleys of musketry, this clamor and fury,--all this tumult and confusion was subdued by the massive walls and arches. There was not air enough for reverberation, and a sense of suffocation was added to the carnage. Outside the tower the noise was scarcely audible; and meanwhile the three little children still slumbered. The fury of the combat deepened; the _retirade_ held its own. There is nothing more difficult to force than this kind of barricade, with a re-entering angle. If the besieged were at a disadvantage in numbers, their position was in their favor. The attacking column had suffered serious loss of men. Formed in a long line outside the tower, it gradually worked its way through the breach, shortening as it disappeared, like a snake twisting itself into its hole. Gauvain, with the rashness peculiar to a youthful leader, was in the lower hall, in the thickest of the mêlée, with the bullets flying in all directions. Let us add, however, that he felt all the confidence of a man who had never been wounded. As he turned to give an order, the flash from a volley of musketry lighted up a face close beside him. "Cimourdain!" he-cried, "why are you here?" "I came to be near you," replied the man, who was indeed Cimourdain. "But you will be killed." "What of that? Are you not in the same danger?" "But I am needed here, and you are not." "Since you are here, my place is by your side." "No, my master." "Yes, my child." And Cimourdain remained near Gauvain. The dead lay in heaps on the pavement of the lower hall. Although the _retirade_ had not as yet been carried, the majority would sooner or later gain the day. The assailants, it is true, were not protected, while the assailed were under cover; and ten of the besiegers fell to one of the besieged; but the latter were constantly replaced. In proportion as the besieged diminished the besiegers increased.