to lead their horses a long distance to water.  Beyond the stream the ground rose again as gradually as it had declined.  It was open and cultivated up to the walls of the besieged city, which was not three-quarters of a mile distant.  Felix could not for the moment distinguish the king’s head-quarters.  The confused manner in which the booths were built prevented him from seeing far, though 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 of his age, if not the very greatest.