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The Earl beheld the coming foe, wheeling round, as the hawk on the heron; halted, drew up his few men in a semicircle, with their large shields as a rampart, and their levelled spears as a palisade; and before them all, as a tower, stood Harold with his axe. In a minute more he was surrounded; and through the rain of javelins that poured upon him, hissed and glittered the sword of Gryffyth.
It means annihilation!" Already he was running up the path toward the palisade. Not one second was to be lost. There was no time even to call a single man of the Folk to reenforce him. Single-handed and alone he must meet the invaders' first attack. Panting, sweating, stumbling, he scrambled up the steep terrace. And as he ran his thoughts outdistanced him.
He based his opinion upon the good location and the great number of saplings that had been cut down already. They would build strong lodges and then a palisade around them with the saplings. He was speedily confirmed in this opinion when he saw warriors come to the forest with hatchets and begin to cut down more saplings.
As was expected, they had scarcely advanced beyond their station, before a hundred Indians fired a shower of balls upon them, happily too remote to do more than inflict slight wounds with spent balls. They retreated within the palisades, and the whole Indian force, seeing no results from stratagem, rose from their covert and rushed towards the palisade.
Martin can watch here, and I will watch in the fold." We have before observed that the lodge of Malachi, Martin, and his wife, was built within the palisade of the sheep-fold, and that there was a passage from the palisade round the house to that which surrounded the sheep-fold, which passage had also a palisade on each side of it.
He strengthened his position by a palisade of stakes and osier hurdles, and there he said he would defend himself against whoever should seek him. The ruins of Battle Abbey at this hour attest the place where Harold's army was posted; and the high altar of the abbey stood on the very spot where Harold's own standard was planted during the fight, and where the carnage was the thickest.
Inside the palisade the ground swam like a loch, and from the hill-side came the rumour of a thousand swollen streams. That, with the heavy drip of laden branches, made sound enough, but after the thunder and the downpour it seemed silence itself. Presently when I looked up I saw that the black wrack was clearing from the sky, and through a gap there shone a watery star.
Behind this palisade, and pressed up close against it, was a mob of men and women the people of the town come to see the execution. But their faces were sympathetic; an unmistakable look of mingled grief and rage, not unmixed with desperation for they were a down-trodden folk shone in the hundreds of eyes turned towards us. I was the only woman among the condemned.
Inside the palisade, and round about, was a multitude of boxes and seats rising one above the other. The structure had no roof, but above the boxes extended cloth of various colors, cut like wings of butterflies, which, sprinkled with fragrant water, were moved to cool the atmosphere.
A pond or lake, which washed one side of the palisade, and was led by sluices within the town, gave an ample supply of water, while the galleries were well provided with magazines of stones. Champlain was greatly exasperated at the desultory and futile procedure of his Huron allies.
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