Truly, to assault such a portal was no child's play, even with such aid as could be given by the rude artillery of the times: petronels and agerons for throwing stones and leaden pellets, catapultas for shooting arrows, and the trebuchettum, or warrewolf, specially designed for the smashing in of gates and walls; all these, and more of their kind, the king's men were well provided with. Stout Earl Warrenne, and the astute Bishop of Coutances, and the accomplished lance, Robert Malet, held many a consultation as they rode round the invested fortress, and scanned it eagerly to see if haply they might discover some weak point which should give them advantage in the attack. But they decided that they must become masters of the great gate, and so of the ditch, before they could make any assault on the castle itself. A month had passed away before they were so masters; but being so, they had their opponents in a veritable trap. The besieged knew well that a harder struggle than ever lay before them in their awful isolation, cut off from communion with their fellow-creatures by a wall of human fury as effectually as if they had been wrecked on some desert island in that vast ocean of the west, the opposite shores of which were all unknown to them, though its great eastern rollers dashed in spray upon the Breton and Norman coasts. Through all this weary time of fear and suspense, with its harassing duties and oppressive sorrows, the Countess Emma found comfort in two dumb friends: Oliver, the earl's Spanish destrier, who had been left in the fortress when De Guader embarked for Denmark; and the brave tassel-gentle, that had been Ralph's gift to her upon the day on which she had promised to share his fortunes, good or ill.