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The central buttress is much shallower than the others and has a different termination. The parapet is probably old Decorated work that has been used again, for it has the wide merlons and cruciform piercings characteristic of early battlements, and the Perpendicular pinnacles, it will be noticed, are not in the middle of the merlons.
The beleaguered people, infuriated by this audacity, scorned the Balearic slingers and archers who from a distance aimed over the merlons, and stepping into the crenels they cast down missiles and stones which, falling vertically, never failed to claim their victims.
Before he reached the merlons he heard a faint groan at his back, a gentle cry which recalled to Actæon's mind the bleating of a fawn when pierced by the huntsman's arrow. Turning he saw Rhanto half way up the steps, wavering, ready to fall backward, her breast covered with blood and pierced by a long feather-tipped shaft, still quivering from the swiftness of its flight.
That crenellated parapet once belonged to military architecture: between those pieces that stood up, the merlons, in the embrasure, the Greek and Roman archers shot their arrows at the enemy and darted back behind the merlons for protection. In spite of its being purely ornamental it told its story just the same, and it expressed the spirit that still persisted in mankind.
The trees were very old, venerable as the palace itself; centenarian oranges with twisted trunks, leaning on the support of a circle of forked sticks to hold up their ancient limbs; gigantic magnolias with more wood than leaves; unfruitful palms lifting themselves into blue space, seeking the sea which they greeted above the merlons with the fluttering plumes of their crested heads.
Its wooden floors are gone, its windows are mere slits, and like the rest of the castle it owes its distinctive appearance to the battlements which crown the whole building, and whose merlons are plain blocks of stone brought to a sharp point at the top.
A bold limestone cliff, in the crevices of which sprung up bushes and shrubs, the refuge and sustenance of rabbits. The old stone fortress was a ruin, now slowly crumbling under the stress of time and wind. The stones were falling from their places, the corners of the merlons were wearing away.
Above the windows comes the moulded string or cornice continued from the transept, and above this the pierced merlons of the Decorated battlement are again very broad in proportion to the embrasures. Instead of being built up, the exposed arches of the triforium have here been glazed.
The warders were not surprised by the assault so much as by its din and fury; and when directly the missiles struck them, thickening into an uninterrupted pouring rain, they cowered behind the merlons, and such other shelters as they could find. This did not last long it was like the shiver and gasp of one plunged suddenly into icy water.
They gave themselves up to all manner of ribaldry near the long line of horses staked out in front of the tents, displaying their wantonness as a shameless insult to the besieged city, and the Saguntines who had witnessed undaunted the approach of the long defile of the enemy trembled with ire behind their merlons as they witnessed this offense of their courtesans. "The wretches! Caninæ!"
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