“You can smile,” said the sergeant angrily, “but you cannot escape.  If I cannot bring you down, I will starve you out.  My men are watching for you, above and below.  You are surrounded.”

“And so are you,” said Rohan, with a laugh, pointing to the mouth of the cavern.  “Look behind you!”

The sergeant and his men turned round, and gave a cry of dismay.  The tide had turned, and the sea was surging fiercely into the mouth of the cavern.

“Give him one volley,” shouted the sergeant, “and then swim for your lives.”

But when the men turned to aim at Rohan, he was no longer visible.  They fired at random at the hole in the cliff, and after filling the great cavern with drifting smoke and echoing thunder, they fled for their lives, wading, swimming through the high spring tide.

“At any rate,” said the sergeant, when they had all got safely back to land, “we can stop Mother Gwenfern from bringing the mad rebel any more food.”

So a watch was set over the cottage in which Rohan’s widowed mother lived, and she was always searched whenever she left her house, and bands of armed men kept guard night and day by the hole at the top of the cliff and by the seaward entrance to the cavern.  At the end of two weeks the sergeant resolved to make another attack.  The man, he thought, must surely have been starved to death, as every avenue of aid had long since been blocked.

So one moonlight night at ebb tide the crowd of soldiers crept into the cavern and lashed two long ladders together, and began to climb up the precipice.  But a strong arm seized the ladders from above, and flung them back on the granite floor of the cave.  Standing like a ghost in the faint, silvery radiance falling through the hole in the cliff, Rohan hurled down upon the dark mass of the besieging crowd great fragments of rock which he had placed, ready for use, along the ledge on which he slept.

“Fire Fire!” shrieked the sergeant, pointing at the white figure of Rohan.

But before the command could be obeyed, Rohan got under shelter, and the bullets rained harmlessly round the spot where he had just stood.  Then, under cover of fire, some men advanced and again placed the ladder against the precipice.  As Rohan crouched down on the ledge, he was startled by the apparition of a human face.  With a cry of rage, he sprang to his feet, and, heedless of the bullets thudding on the rock around him, he slowly and painfully lifted up a terrible granite boulder, poised it for a moment over his head, and then hurled it down at the shapes dimly struggling below him.  There was a crash, a shriek.  Under the weight of the boulder the ladders broke, and the men upon them fell down, amid horrible cries of agony and terror.

What happened after this Rohan never knew; for, overcome by frenzy and fatigue, he swooned away.  When he opened his eyes, he was lying beneath the hole in the cliff, with the moonlight streaming upon his face.  From below him came the soft sound of lapping water, and, looking down, he saw that the tide had entered the cave, and forced the besiegers to give over their attack.