These detachments rushed with incredible fury towards the point of attack, despite a most obstinate defence, and the great loss which they sustained by missiles of every kind, and continued the assault for nearly an hour, supplied by reinforcements which more than recruited their diminished numbers. When they were at last compelled to retreat, they seemed to adopt a new and yet more harassing species of attack. A large body assaulted one exposed point of the fortress with such fury as to draw thither as many of the besieged as could possibly be spared from other defended posts, and when there appeared a point less strongly manned than was adequate to defence, that, in its turn, was furiously assailed by a separate body of the enemy. Thus the defenders of the Garde Doloureuse resembled the embarrassed traveller, engaged in repelling a swarm of hornets, which, while he brushes them, from one part, fix in swarms upon another, and drive him to despair by their numbers, and the boldness and multiplicity of their attacks. The postern being of course a principal point of attack, Father Aldrovand, whose anxiety would not permit him to be absent from the walls, and who, indeed, where decency would permit, took an occasional share in the active defence of the place, hasted thither, as the point chiefly in danger. Here he found the Fleming, like a second Ajax, grim with dust and blood, working with his own hands the great engine which he had lately helped to erect, and at the same time giving heedful eye to all the exigencies around. "How thinkest thou of this day's work?" said the monk in a whisper. "What skills it talking of it, father?" replied Flammock; "thou art no soldier, and I have no time for words." "Nay, take thy breath," said the monk, tucking up the sleeves of his frock; "I will try to help thee the whilst--although, our Lady pity me, I know nothing of these strange devices--not even the names. But our rule commands us to labour; there can be no harm therefore, in turning this winch--or in placing this steel-headed piece of wood opposite to the chord, (suiting his actions to his words,) nor see I aught uncanonical in adjusting the lever thus, or in touching the spring." The large bolt whizzed through the air as he spoke, and was so successfully aimed, that it struck down a Welsh chief of eminence, to which Gwenwyn himself was in the act of giving some important charge. "Well driven, _trebuchet_--well flown, _quarrel!_" cried the monk, unable to contain his delight, and giving in his triumph, the true technical names to the engine, and the javelin which it discharged. "And well aimed, monk," added Wilkin Flammock; "I think thou knowest more than is in thy breviary." "Care not thou for that," said the father; "and now that thou seest I can work an engine, and that the Welsh knaves seem something low in stomach, what think'st thou of our estate?"