“What shall we do now?” said Foy, “barricade the door?”

“I can see no use in that,” answered Martin, “for then they would batter it down, or perhaps burn a way through it.  No; let us take it off its hinges and lay it on blocks about eight inches high, so that they may catch their shins against it when they try to rush us.”

“A good notion,” said Foy, and they lifted off the narrow oaken door and propped it up on four moulds of metal across the threshold, weighting it with other moulds.  Also they strewed the floor of the landing with three-pound shot, so that men in a hurry might step on them and fall.  Another thing they did, and this was Foy’s notion.  At the end of the chamber were the iron baths in which the lead was melted, and beneath them furnaces ready laid for the next day’s founding.  These Foy set alight, pulling out the dampers to make them burn quickly, and so melt the leaden bars which lay in the troughs.

“They may come underneath,” he said, pointing to the trap through which the hot shot were dropped into the tank, “and then molten lead will be useful.”

Martin smiled and nodded.  Then he took down a crossbow from the walls, for in those days, when every dwelling and warehouse might have to be used as a place of defence, it was common to keep a good store of weapons hung somewhere ready to hand, and went to the narrow window which overlooked the gate.

“As I thought,” he said.  “They can’t get in and don’t like the look of the iron spikes, so they are fetching a smith to burst it open.  We must wait.”

Very soon Foy began to fidget, for this waiting to be butchered by an overwhelming force told upon his nerves.  He thought of Elsa and his parents, whom he would never see again; he thought of death and all the terrors and wonders that might lie beyond it; death whose depths he must so soon explore.  He had looked to his crossbow, had tested the string and laid a good store of quarrels on the floor beside him; he had taken a pike from the walls and seen to its shaft and point; he had stirred the fires beneath the leaden bars till they roared in the sharp draught.

“Is there nothing more to do?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Martin, “we might say our prayers; they will be the last,” and suiting his action to the word, the great man knelt down, an example which Foy followed.

“Do you speak,” said Foy, “I can’t think of anything.”

So Martin began a prayer which is perhaps worthy of record:—­

“O Lord,” he said, “forgive me all my sins, which are too many to count, or at least I haven’t the time to try, and especially for cutting off the head of the executioner with his own sword, although I had no death quarrel with him, and for killing a Spaniard in a boxing match.  O Lord, I thank you very much because you have arranged for us to die fighting instead of being tortured and burnt in the gaol, and I pray that we may be able to kill enough Spaniards first to make them remember us for years to come.  O Lord, protect my dear master and mistress, and let the former learn that we have made an end of which he would approve, but if may be, hide it from the Paster Arentz, who might think that we ought to surrender.  That is all I have to say.  Amen.”