from the higher
ground it was easy to look over their low roofs.

He now wandered into the centre of the camp, and saw with astonishment
groups of retainers everywhere eating, drinking, talking, and even
playing cards or dice, but not a single officer of any rank. At last,
stopping by the embers of a fire, he asked timidly if he might have
breakfast. The soldiers laughed and pointed to a cart behind them,
telling him to help himself. The cart was turned with the tail towards
the fire, and laden with bread and sides of bacon, slices of which the
retainers had been toasting at the embers.

He did as he was bid, and the next minute a soldier, not quite steady on
his legs even at that hour, offered him the can, "for," said he, "you
had best drink whilst you may, youngster. There is always plenty of
drink and good living at the beginning of a war, and very often not a
drop or a bite to be got in the middle of it." Listening to their talk
as he ate his breakfast, Felix found the reason there were no officers
about was because most of them had drunk too freely the night before.
The king himself, they said, was put to bed as tight as a drum, and it
took no small quantity to fill so huge a vessel, for he was a remarkably
big man.

After the fatigue of the recent march, they had, in fact, refreshed
themselves, and washed down the dust of the track. They thought that
this siege was likely to be a very tough business, and congratulated
themselves that it was not thirty miles to Aisi, so that so long as they
stayed there they might, perhaps, get supplies of provisions with
tolerable regularity. "But if you're over the water, my lad," said the
old fellow with the can, picking his teeth with a twig, "and have got to
get your victuals by ship; by George, you may have to eat grass, or gnaw
boughs like a horse."

None of these men wore any arms, except the inevitable knife; their arms
were piled against the adjacent booth, bows and quivers, spears, swords,
bills and darts, thrown together just as they had cast them aside, and
more or less rusty from the dew. Felix thought that had the enemy come
suddenly down in force they might have made a clean sweep of the camp,
for there were no defences, neither breastwork, nor fosse, nor any set
guard. But he forgot that the enemy were quite as ill-organized as the
besiegers; probably they were in still greater confusion, for King
Isembard was considered one of the greatest military commanders