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The Royalist garrison of about one hundred and sixty men were reduced to great extremity and tried to escape by a boat, but in this they were disappointed, as one of the besiegers, watching his opportunity, swam across the Wye with a knife in his teeth and cut the boat adrift. Then the castle was assaulted and taken, and the commander and most of the garrison slain.
The half moon, whose existence they had not suspected, rose before them bristling with cannon. A sharp fire was instantly opened upon the besiegers, while at the same instant the ravelin, which the citizens had undermined, blew up with a severe explosion, carrying into the air all the soldiers who had just entered it so triumphantly. This was the turning point.
That day a summons was sent to the garrison, but rejected, and work upon batteries to breach the town walls was then pushed rapidly forward; for it was becoming more and more evident that the siege must be brought to an end, lest the entire force of besiegers should become disabled by sickness.
The place being invested, and the batteries raised, the besiegers proceeded with such rapidity that a breach was soon effected. Colonel Mackillicut the governor demanded a parley, and hostages were exchanged; but he rejected the conditions that were offered, and hostilities recommenced with redoubled vigour.
The knight burnt the first cat by flinging blazing tar-barrels on it. So the besiegers made the roof of this one very steep, and covered it with raw hides, and the tar-barrels could not harm it.
Not long afterwards the Athenians came with thirty ships and six hundred heavy infantry, and the Argives joining them with all their forces, marched out and besieged the men in Orneae for one day; but the garrison escaped by night, the besiegers having bivouacked some way off.
They were unfortunately deficient in correct drawing, proportions, or perspective; the mounds and fortifications were scarcely three times as high as the besiegers; the fields reached to the clouds; the trees and lotus flowers could scarcely be distinguished from each other; and the heads of men and animals were all alike, and only in profile.
An open assault indeed from the whole body of besiegers, whose number was reckoned by Nathan at full fifteen or twenty, must have produced the same success, though with the loss of several lives.
Soon the signals of war proclaimed that an army was approaching for the rescue of the fortress. Shouts of exultation rose from the garrison, which fell like the knell of death upon the ears of the besiegers, freezing on the plains. The alarm which spread through the camp was instantaneous and terrible. The darkness of a November night soon settled down over city and plain.
These islands yielded a ready submission; and it was not till Datis and Artaphernes reached Euboea that they encountered any resistance. Eretria defended itself gallantly for six days, and repulsed the Persians with loss; but on the seventh the gates were opened to the besiegers by the treachery of two of its leading citizens.
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