That very night, when the Mussulmen had finished their prayers, and ere darkness spread its sable shroud over the land, the loud trumpets of Saladin summoned the Christians to surrender “the house of God” to the arms of the faithful: but the Christians returned for answer, that, please God, the Holy City should _not_ be surrendered. The next morning at sunrise, the terrified inhabitants were awakened by the clangour of horns and drums, the loud clash of arms, and the fierce cries of the remorseless foe. The women and children rushed into the churches, and threw themselves on their knees before the altars, weeping and wailing, and lifting up their hands to heaven, whilst the men hastened to man the battlements. The Temple could no longer furnish its hundreds and thousands of brave warriors for the defence of the holy sanctuary of the Christians; a few miserable knights, with some serving brethren, alone remained in its now silent halls and deserted courts. For fifteen days did the Christians successfully resist the utmost efforts of the enemy; the monks and the canons, the bishops and the priests, took arms in defence of the Holy Sepulchre, and lined in warlike array the dark gray battlements and towers of Jerusalem. But the Mussulman archers soon became so numerous and so expert, that the garrison durst not show themselves upon the walls “Their arrows fell,” says our worthy countryman, abbot Coggleshale, one of the brave defenders of the place, “as thick as hail upon the battlements, so that no one could lift a finger above the walls without being maimed. So great indeed was the number of the wounded, that it was as much as all the doctors of the city and of the Hospital could do to extract the weapons from their bodies. The face of the narrator of these events was lacerated with an arrow which pierced right through his nose; the wooden shaft was withdrawn, but a piece of the iron head remains there to this day.”[72]