ere planted
wherever they could sweep the approaches to the breach, and planks
studded with nails were sunk in the shallow water of the harbour, to
impede the progress of those who might attempt to swim or wade across.
For the time, therefore, the functions of Gervaise were in abeyance, and
he laboured with the rest of the garrison at the defences.

At daybreak on the 9th of June, a great number of vessels and boats,
crowded with soldiers, bore down on St. Nicholas. As they approached,
every gun on the fortifications that could be brought to bear upon them
opened fire; but in a dense mass they advanced. Some made their way to
the rocks and landed the soldiers there; others got alongside the mole;
but the majority grounded in the shallow water of the harbour, and
the troops, leaping out, waded to the foot of the breach. On its crest
D'Aubusson himself had taken up his station. Beside him stood Caretto,
and around them the most distinguished knights of the Order. With wild
shouts the Turks rushed up the breach, and swarmed thickly up the ruined
masonry until, at its summit, they encountered the steel clad line of
the defenders. For hours the terrible struggle continued. As fast as the
head of the Turkish column broke and melted away against the obstacle
they tried in vain to penetrate, fresh reinforcements took the place
of those who had fallen, and in point of valour and devotion the Moslem
showed himself a worthy antagonist of the Christian. It was not only
at the breach that the conflict raged. At other points the Turks, well
provided with ladders, fixed them against the walls, and desperately
strove to obtain a footing there. From the breach clouds of dust rose
from under the feet of the combatants, mingling with the smoke of
the cannon on the ramparts, the fort, and Turkish ships, and at times
entirely hid from the sight of the anxious spectators on the walls of
the town and fortress, and of the still more numerous throng of Turks
on St. Stephen's Hill, the terrible struggle that continued without a
moment's intermission.

The combatants now fought in comparative silence. The knights, exhausted
and worn out by their long efforts beneath the blazing sun, still showed
an unbroken front; but it was only occasionally that the battle cry of
the Order rose in the air, as a fresh body of assailants climbed up the
corpse strewn breach. The yell of the Moslems rose less frequently;
they sacrificed their lives as freely and d