TWICE IN TIME

CHAPTER XVII Defense of the Fortress

Mounting to battlements around the upper wall of the castle, we all saw that the sea was indeed full of craft. There were galleys, a full dozen, many smaller feluccas, and open rowboats swarming as thick as a school of mullet. Drums resounded from the larger ships; and horns. Our own bugles brayed back defiance.

Father Augustino was rasping orders, like any seasoned captain.

"Man and load each gun," he commanded. "Line the walls, keep lookout for where they may land." His eye found me. "Ha, wrestler! Canst use a sword?" He motioned to an aide, who thrust a hilt into my hand. "You have fought your fellow Christians over-long. Fight now against infidels!"

I shifted the weapon to my left fist, trying its balance. At an opposite rampart stood the man who had recommended my joining the defense, and to him I made my way.

"I do not know you, sir, though you know me," I said. "Thanks for saving me from that spider's hole into which they would have thrown me."

"We will speak more of it anon." He pointed to where, inside the little harbor, lay a trim sailing vessel among the boats of the Holy Pilgrims. "Yonder is my craft, and upon it a fair lady who must not set foot on this monk-owned island. I pray heaven naught befalls either of them."

But I showed him where some of our men strung a heavy chain at the mouth of the inlet. That would prevent the approach of enemy boats, which in any case sought to storm us from the other side.

At that point the wall dropped straight to the sea, and had been badly damaged not long before—perhaps in the fight a spring ago, when I had heard crumbling of stones. The brothers had built it up roughly with broken masonry and spaded earth, faced it with timbers and logs, but it was still the weak spot of the defenses.

Even the stone flooring at the top had collapsed and was replaced with planking; while, instead of an adequate parapet, a work of earth-filled goatskins had been laid in and topped by a great log, nearly a hundred feet long.[14] From this log ran back cross-pieces, lashed on as slanting supports.

Here the fire from the galleys was concentrated. Round shot tore holes in the goatskins and let out cascades of the heaped earth, while a blizzard of arrows and slings picked off such the brothers as manned the log-topped parapet. The others crouched low.

"They will seek to carry this quarter," announced Father Augustino sagely, limping across to the log.

His gown, looped up to kilt length, showed great steel greaves upon his shins, and he had thrown back his cowl to don a plumeless helmet. A bolt from a crossbow struck his shoulder, then glanced away. He must be wearing a steel cuirass under his robe.

"Aye," he called, "here they come, a hell's spawn of boats, under cover of their fellows' fire! Keep down, brethren, until they mount our wall. Then the fire must slacken, and we will meet the unbelievers with an argument they will understand."

Drawing his sword, he spat between big hand and worn hilt.

I dared look over the log. A shoal of boats swept swiftly toward us from the galleys, boats filled with gesticulating and howling Turks. I saw the glitter of their mail, the curves of their flourished scimitars, the upward jut of helmet spikes from their turbans. A moment later, a jagged little stone sang upward and against my forehead—slung, like David's pebble, from a sling. Like Goliath I fell sprawling on my back, half dazed and almost dropping my sword. * * *

Father Augustino leaned farther from his point of vantage, careless of the rain of missiles.

"They raise ladders!" he cried. "Here they mount!" He turned to his followers. "Strike, brethren, for the true faith!"

I made shift to rise, a little shakily, and watched as a line of black-robes came swiftly forward over the planked-in floor, swords and axes and halberds at the ready. The sound of firing had ceased from galleyward, as Father Augustino had predicted. A moment later, a yodelling cry rose from below:

"Ululululallahuakbar!"

One prolonged bellow of challenge and of profession. Then the outer side of our log was lined with turbaned, bearded heads.

The storming party was upon us, eager for trouble. Nor could they have come to a better place to find it.

The Holy Pilgrims hurled themselves upon the attackers, calling upon the names of every saint in the calendar, and hewing and thrusting like fiends instead of clergymen. At their head, and in the hottest press, nimbly hobbled Father Augustino, his straight sword playing like a striking adder against a whole forest of scimitars.

Something impelled me in his direction, and in good time for him. While his point wedged in the neck-bone of one adversary, another charged close and, catching him by a fold of his gown, slashed a scimitar viciously at his head.

The blow was turned by Father Augustino's helm, but its force staggered him, and a second effort beat him to his knee. With a whoop, the Turk lifted his blade for a third and finishing cut, but at that moment I hurled myself between, my own steel forestalling his.

He was a deep-chested fellow, brown as chocolate, with mad foam on his black beard.

"Ya Nazarini!" he snarled. "Ya 'bn kalb!"[15]

And he fell furiously upon me. But for all his fierceness, I was more than his match. My first slicing lunge laid open his face, my second bit into the side of his neck. He collapsed, bleeding from nose and mouth to die even as I turned away.

The surviving Turks were reeling back, whipped along by the savage garrison. They tumbled down their ladders and rowed hurriedly away in their boats, under a new curtain of shot and arrows.

Father Augustino was up again, glancing around to estimate the situation.

"We suffered sorely, but they suffered worse," he commented. "What says Holy Writ? 'Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.' " He turned his eye on me. "Thanks for the rescue, my son. Yet I make no doubt that, with heaven's help, I could have risen and overthrown him. Whence will come the next assault?"

We found out soon enough. Three great galleys moved against the mouth of our inlet. Our gun crews toiled madly, but could not batter them back. When the galleys had drawn close, a great throng of little black figures dived overside and began to swim for the inlet.

"By heaven, I see that they carry axes!" spoke up my friend, the bearded visitor. "They will attack the chain. If it is cut, they will come in and seize our ships!"

"A sortie! A sortie!" yelled Father Augustino. "Out, brethren, and meet them in the water!"

He led the rush downward himself, leaving only the armed prisoners and a dozen black-robes to hold the upper ramparts. We watched, fascinated, from above, as the monks burst from the great gate, hurried down to the water's edge. Some of them were shot by crossbows on the galleys, but the greater part reached the water and swam forward to meet the Turks. There was a fierce, clumsy melee in the waves that lapped along either side of the chain.* * *

"The brethren triumph!" pointed out a monk at my side. "Look, the forgotten of God are retreating, swimming away."

"They do so more readily than I had hoped," I replied, thinking of the previous stubborn assault. My own words gave me a new disturbing wonder. "What," I demanded, "if it were a false attack, to withdraw us from our own defense?"

Even as I spoke, I saw that the galleys were pulling away with all their oars, skirting the rocks narrowly and speeding around to the point from which the earth-mended wall had once been stormed.

"Rally! Rally!" I shouted, and led the rush across to the rampart of earthbags and log.

It was as I had been inspired to guess. The sea was full of boats again, scores of them, rowing swiftly forward to the attack. A spatter of shafts and shot made the few of us who were left put our heads down.

"What is to be done?" demanded a wide-eyed brother with a smear of gore on his chin. "See, their whole force comes to this side, more than the first time! Their rush will beat us back, and our comrades outside, returning from the chain, will not arrive in time to hold the castle!"

"Stand to the rampart, hurl down their ladders!" stoutly shouted an armed captive.

As he leaned forward to suit action to word a crossbow bolt whacked into him, and he crumpled across the log, dead. The rest of us crouched low, swords in hand, determining to die hard.

I found myself kneeling beside one of the lashed cross-pieces that propped the great log which was our temporary coping. It was none too firm, that cross-piece, I judged. And again I was inspired.

"Hark ye, all!" I cried at the top of my voice. "We can save ourselves! Form in parties by these cross-pieces! Clutch them in your arms! If we bear with all our strength at once, it will force the great log forward and outward!"

"To what good?" demanded another.

"To overthrow the ladders, as we cannot with such a fire against us. Do not argue, friends, but do as I say!"

There was no time or hope otherwise. In a trice we formed in half a dozen knots, all crouching or kneeling, our weapons flung down and our arms wrapped around the cross-timbers.

Whoops and execrations rang from beneath us, where the ladders were being reared from the boat bottoms to give access to our fortress. I felt my heart race like a drum-roll, but kept my eyes steadily on the parapet, where the spiky ends of the ladders showed.

"Allahuakbar!" thundered the enemy, and again a row of heads shot up into view.

"Now!" I shouted my loudest, and taxed all my muscles to drag forward on the cross-piece I clutched.

There was a concerted grunt from every defender as we bore mightily against the log. And, as I had dared hope, so it was. The mass of timber slid gratingly forward, as a drawer slides from a bureau. With it swayed the storming ladders, so precariously balanced, and toppled. A single concerted shriek assailed heaven from the many throats of those who were suddenly hurled back, down, among the boats and into the surf.

Dragging back our timber defense, we cheered each other in wild and thankful joy. * * *

That unexpected reverse gave the Moslems pause—a blessed, blessed pause, enough for the return and remarshaling of the swimming sortie led by Father Augustino. He clapped my shoulder with a hard hand.

"You have saved this holy place," he told me, "and if it were in my power to free you—"

He turned away to thunder new orders. I stood alone for the moment, then a hand clutched my sleeve. I turned, to see the bearded man whose name I did not know but who knew me; the man whose boat was in the little harbor below.

"Come," he said softly. "If he cannot give you liberty, I can."

"How?" I demanded, hope pounding in my breast.

He did not pause to reply, but drew me with him to the stairs and down. We went unchallenged through the lower part of the castle, and came to the gate. He unfastened it, and we stepped outside.

"See," he bade me. "The Turkish boats have all gone around to the other side, hoping to make good that assault which you foiled. Now is my time to flee. I have too fast a ship for them to catch, and I will take you along."

I was too amazed and thankful to speak. A moment later we had hurried down, sprung aboard his half-decked sailing vessel, and were headed out for that quarter of the sea just now unguarded by either Holy Pilgrim or infidel Turk—the sea beyond which lay the Italy from which I had been carried captive six years before.