A wild yell answered this, and bullets from the men who were filling the dry moat, while others scrambled across it and charged up to the gates with small powder-kegs and petards ready. This was not done without scathe, however; Brian's men loosed their muskets, and one by one the heavy bastards thundered out across the snow, though the result was hard to see in the darkness. There came a ragged flash of musketry in reply, and that abandoned cannon roared out lustily, though its ball passed far overhead. Brian stood on a demi-bastion that half flanked the gates, and after firing his pistol into the men below, he leaped down the steps into the courtyard and joined Turlough behind the falcons. "One at a time, Turlough. They'll have the gates down in a minute." While he waited for the storm to fall, Brian saw that two or three of his men had been hit. He wondered dully that the Dark Master had not made a general assault, and concluded that he must wish to save men. It was a long moment that dragged down on him; then a splash of light burst up, the gates were driven inward and shattered, and with a great roar there fell a rain of riven beams and stones and dirt. Sheltering in the hall doorway, Brian and Turlough stayed unmoving through an instant of black silence. Out of it broke a wild Scots yell, and in the light of the courtyard cressets a wave of men surged up in the breach. Brian's linstock fell on a falcon, and the little gun barked a hail of bullets across the Scots; Turlough's gun followed suit, and the first lines of men went down in a struggling mass. The Dark Master was not to be beaten this time, however. Another wave of Scots swept up, with a mass of men behind them. While some of Brian's men tried to get the two falcons reloaded, a storm of bullets swept across the courtyard, and Brian saw Turlough turn and run for it through the doorway, while two of the men fell over a falcon. But as the first line of men broke into the courtyard, Brian fired the remaining three cannon as fast as he could touch linstock to powder. The bullet-hail tore the front ranks to shreds, but through the darkling smoke-cloud he saw other men come leaping, and knew that the game was up. On the next instant his men had closed around him, muskets were stabbing the powder-smoke, and Brian fell to work with his Spanish blade. O'Donnells and Scots together heaved up against them, but Brian's point weaved out between cutlas and claymore and bit out men's lives until the mass of men surged back again like the backleash of a wave that comes against a wall.