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Updated: June 18, 2025
William had suffered much from unsympathetic neighbours who had taken upon themselves to object to such innocent and artistic objects as catapults and pea-shooters, and cricket balls. William had a very soft spot in his heart for Mr. Gregorius Lambkin. William spent a good deal of his time in Mr. Lambkin's garden during his absence, and Mr. Lambkin seemed to have no objection.
Three thousand Turkish heads were hurled by catapults into the city by way of information. The records paint an awful picture of the siege. Whatever of mechanism or method was known to Greeks or Romans was employed by besiegers and besieged. Stones, fireballs, bunches of arrows, heavy beams were fired into the city by ballista and catapult, and were fired back with equal skill and abundance.
Cuthbert returned with the news which gave great satisfaction to the earl. The castle was now a scene of bustle and business; armorers were at work repairing headpieces and breastplates, sharpening swords and battle-axes, while the fletchers prepared sheaves of arrows. In the courtyard a number of men were engaged oiling the catapults, ballistas, and other machines for hurling stones.
Near the elephants, along the river bank, stood the engines of war, the catapults, the battering-rams, the movable towers, complicated structures of wood and bronze, drawn by rosaries of double yokes of oxen having enormous backward curving horns.
The three great catapults did not stop in spite of all these works. Their ravages were extraordinary: thus a man's head rebounded from the pediment of the Syssitia; a woman who was being confined in the street of Kinisdo was crushed by a block of marble, and her child was carried with the bed as far as the crossways of Cinasyn, where the coverlet was found.
"We didn't think you'd care, 'cos you've got to catapults. But we're goin' to do what we've settled to do, so it's no good sayin' we hadn't ought and that sort of thing, 'cos we're goin' to!" The day had passed in an ominous peacefulness. Charlotte and Harold had kept out of my way, as well as out of everybody else's, in a purposeful manner that ought to have bred suspicion.
Billie took great interest in the darting play of the little flylike machines, the action of the mechanical catapults, and the ease with which the twelve-inch ball was usually caught in the baskets on the machines' prows. She reported the score from time to time in a manner which would have made a telegrapher jealous.
And his city, naturally impregnable on account of its strong ramparts and gate-ways, had seven trenches, that were deep and full of water to the brim and that abounded with fishes and sharks and alligators, made more impregnable still by means of pointed stakes of Khadira wood. And the ramparts, heaped with stones, were made impregnable by means of catapults.
The hoplites of the Mercenaries were placed in the first rank, and behind them the slingers and horsemen; quite at the back were the baggage, chariots, and horses; and the engines bristled in front of this throng at a distance of three hundred paces from the towers. The first, which were the catapults, was composed of a square frame with two vertical uprights and a horizontal bar.
Besides many improvements in arms and manual exercise, the Normans perfected the old Roman machines and engines used in sieges. The scorpion was a huge cross-bow, the catapults showered stones to a great distance; the ballista discharged flights of darts and arrows.
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