the approaches, the workmen
had been constantly harassed by the fire from the guns on the walls,
suffering considerable loss of life; but their numerical superiority was
so vast that the loss in no way affected the plans of the pasha.

As soon as the battery was completed, gangs of men, accustomed to mining
operations, set to work in its rear to drive sloping passages downwards,
opening into the face of the great cutting, and through these vast
quantities of earth and stones were poured, so as to afford a passage
across it, the depth being largely diminished by the great pile of
rubbish that had already fallen from the breached wall. This novel mode
of attack was altogether unexpected. The knights had regarded the fosse
that had been cut at such an enormous expenditure of labour as forming
an altogether impassable obstruction, and were dismayed at seeing the
progress made in filling it up. D'Aubusson himself, full of resources as
he was, saw that the defence was seriously threatened, unless some plan
of meeting this unexpected danger could be devised.

He consulted Maitre Georges; but the latter could make no suggestion;
his only advice being the erection of a battery at a spot where it
was almost self evident that it could be of no utility whatever.
Other circumstances combined to render the suspicions D'Aubusson had
entertained of the good faith of the renegade almost a certainty.
Georges was seized, tried, and put to torture, and under this owned that
he had been sent into the town for the purpose of betraying it; and he
was, the same day, hung in the great square. His guilt must always be
considered as uncertain. There was no proof against him, save his
own confession; and a confession extorted by torture is of no value
whatever. There are certainly many good grounds for suspicion, but it
is possible that Georges really repented his apostacy, and acted in good
faith in deserting the standard of Paleologus. He was undoubtedly a man
of altogether exceptional ability and acquirements, and even the knights
who have written accounts of the siege do justice to the fascination of
his manner and the charm of his conversation.

D'Aubusson now set to work in another direction to counteract the
efforts of the Turks. He erected an immense wooden catapult, which threw
huge pieces of rock into the midst of the Turkish works, crushing down
the wooden screens erected to hide their approaches, breaking in the
covered ways, and ca