Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Murkwood Spears spear struck the outjutting cornice of the left-hand gallery, rebounded and _ buried itself in the neck of one of Umfraville’s soldiers. Straightening, Gislac cried out an order. esse RUMBLING over the pavement of sxe the wall, great boulders were rolled ™ to the battlements and prized over with crowbars, falling with a swish and a roar. Full in the midst of the press below they crashed, and shrieks and groans gave answer. The assailants pressed back, panic- stricken, from the death they could not fight. As they fled, the thirsty spears and arrows of the garrison drove in among them, piercing mail and flesh, till they scattered in the dark. “That will satisfy the boar!” Gislac mocked. ‘Now for the bull!” The bull, however, was content to wait for a while. All was quiet the next day. The garrison on the walls and the host in the trenches below glared or gibed at each other, but neither loosed a shaft. The be- sieged had ample shelter behind their battlements and knew better than to pro- voke the heavier arrow-flight of those below. “Pray God de Born be not frightened at Umfraville’s ill-luck!” de Gislac prayed. But de Born had something in store, as Sir Giles observed, for before the northern face of the tower, where de Born’s brown bull floated in the breeze, there was much stir and bustle. The trenches lay at the very foot of the slope. Behind them in the level land carpenters were doing strange things to the empty provision-carts. These were being taken apart, reassembled on lower bodies, strengthened with beams and roofed with heavy reenforced planks. Butchers were busily skinning cattle and stretching the green hides. A log like the trunk so ill-used by Umfraville was being sawn in two by shifts of men laboring mightily with a crude two-handled saw. The sight of these preparations wrung a wry smile from Sir Giles. “Well enough, well enough,” he com- mented to Joseph the spearman, “but I have a blunt answer ready.” All night Gislac paced the battlements, waiting for de Born’s assault. All night the fires burned high on the tower, the men- at-arms roasting joints of mutton in the flames and gnawing at the meat between 3! fitful bursts of activity. Fitful only in appearance, however, for every man in Gislac’s garrison had his appointed task, his appointed moment for its performance, no matter what the circumstance. Watch succeeded watch; one man re- lieved another; but always at the proper time, with intervals snatched for food, for the moderate taking of wine, for game and jest about the fires. The Saxon bowmen stood watch like the Normans, but at stations specially assigned to them. They ate together and drank their honey-mead, but had no dealings more than necessary with the men-at-arms. Sir Giles wisely respected their aloofness, knowing how much less love existed between serf and Norman soldier than between serf and lord. At length, just as the first flush of pink mingled with the gray of dawn, de Born’s camp quickened into life—slowly at first, a horse neighing here and there, a few spearmen rubbing the sleep from their eyes, a snatch of drowsy song. Then the garri- son caught the slow creak of ungreased wheels, the clatter of scabbards against mail. The men of High Tower were in- stantly at their stations, weapons in hand, the piles of stones and darts freshly renewed. “The Brown Bull has more wit than I thought,’”’ Gislac said to his captain, Ber- mond. “His scheme is a good one, though not so good against me. See! He has per- suaded Monrepaire to lend him a score of archers. They move! Run you now, Bermond, and prepare the tubes!” Bermond shot a quick glance at his master. “Tubes, said you? Ha! ha! ha! The calves of the Brown Bull will be veal this morn!’ He was off like the wind, shouting orders to his men-at-arms. A great scurrying about followed his commands. Bulky ob- jects wrapped in hides were lugged forth, set out behind the merlons and built solidly in place with heaps of stones. The sunlight was yellow on the plain when de Born advanced, and a strange ad- vance it was. Covered by a line of archers, a dozen of the roofed carts prepared the day before moved ponderously up the hill toward High Tower, pushed by sweating soldiers. The stretched bulls’ hides had been nailed over the planking everywhere and fell in curtains over the otherwise open fronts of the wains. - Comicbhook CO