The portal which led from the inner wall of the barbican, now held by the besiegers, to the moat and corresponded with a sally-port in the main wall of the castle was suddenly opened. The temporary bridge was immediately thrust forward and extended its length between the castle and outwork, forming a slippery and precarious passage for two men abreast to cross the moat. Well aware of the importance of taking the foe by surprise, the Black Knight, closely followed by Cedric, threw himself upon the bridge and reached the opposite shore. Here he began to thunder with his ax on the gate of the castle, protected in part from the shot and stones cast by the defenders by the ruins of the former drawbridge, which the Templar had demolished in his retreat from the barbican, leaving the [v]counterpoise still attached to the upper part of the portal. The followers of the knight had no such shelter; two were instantly shot with cross-bow bolts, and two more fell into the moat. The others retreated back into the barbican. [Illustration: [See page 323] He Began to Thunder on the Gate] The situation of Cedric and the Black Knight was now truly dangerous and would have been still more so but for the constancy of the archers in the barbican, who ceased not to shower their arrows on the battlements, distracting the attention of those by whom they were manned and thus affording a respite to their two chiefs from the storm of missiles, which must otherwise have overwhelmed them. But their situation was eminently perilous, and was becoming more so with every moment. "Shame on ye all!" cried De Bracy to the soldiers around him; "do ye call yourselves cross-bowmen and let these two dogs keep their station under the walls of the castle? Heave over the coping stones from the battlement, an better may not be. Get pick-ax and levers and down with that huge pinnacle!" pointing to a heavy piece of stone-carved work that projected from the parapet. At this moment Locksley whipped up the courage of his men. "Saint George for England!" he cried. "To the charge, bold yeomen! Why leave ye the good knight and noble Cedric to storm the pass alone? Make in, yeomen! The castle is taken. Think of honor; think of spoil. One effort and the place is ours." With that he bent his good bow and sent a shaft right through the breast of one of the men-at-arms, who, under De Bracy's direction, was loosening a fragment from one of the battlements to precipitate on the heads of Cedric and the Black Knight. A second soldier caught from the hands of the dying man the iron crow, with which he had heaved up and loosened the stone pinnacle, when, receiving an arrow through his headpiece, he dropped from the battlement into the moat a dead man. The men-at-arms were daunted, for no armor seemed proof against the shot of this tremendous archer. "Do you give ground, base knaves?" cried De Bracy. "[v]_Mountjoy Saint Dennis_! Give me the lever."