The besiegers climbed the cliff on the side farthest from the village. It seemed inaccessible; but the brigands were so well used to assaults of that sort that they were very soon under the walls of the fort. Half of them, under Malacarne, climbed still higher, and posted themselves in an abandoned bastion on the highest point of the mountain. This crenelated bastion afforded a safe position from which to fire down almost perpendicularly upon the castle. It was agreed that Fra Angelo and his men should station themselves at the entrance to the fortress, where there was only a huge, worm-eaten, disjointed gate, which it was not considered necessary to destroy, as that operation might take sufficient time to give the garrison an opportunity to organize an effective resistance. Malacarne's party was to fire on the castle from above, while Fra Angelo held himself in readiness to fall upon those who should come out. Then he would pretend to retreat, and, while they pursued him, Malacarne would come down, attack the enemy in the rear, and place him between two fires. The little garrison temporarily quartered in the castle consisted of about thirty men, a larger number than the assailants anticipated, the reinforcements from Castro-Giovanni having arrived secretly at nightfall and climbed up the road, or rather the staircase, from the village, unseen by the bandits who were busily occupied in making their preparations and taking great pains to keep out of sight. That part of the escort which had kept watch throughout the preceding night was sleeping, wrapped in their cloaks, on the floors of the great dismantled halls. The late arrivals had lighted an enormous fire of fir branches in the courtyard, and were playing _mora_ to keep awake. The prisoners occupied the great square tower: Verbum Caro, exhausted and gasping for breath, stretched on a pile of rushes; the Piccinino, gloomy but calm, sitting on a stone bench, much wider awake than his keepers. He had heard a little bird whistling in the ravine, and had recognized that designedly inaccurate melody as a signal from Malacarne. He was patiently rubbing against a projecting stone the cord with which his hands were bound.