These determined upon making a desperate resistance when the wall should give way, which would, they doubted not, be upon the following day.

Everything that could be done was tried to hinder the destruction made by the enemy's shot.

Numbers of sacks were filled with earth, and lowered from the walls above so as to hang in regular order before it, and so break the force of the shot.
This had some effect, but gradually the wall crumbled beneath the blows of the missiles from the Roundhead guns.
"We are useless here, save as footmen," Harry said that night to his host.

"There is a postern gate, is there not, behind the castle?
Methinks that if we could get out in the dark unobserved, and form close to the walls, so that their pickets lying around might not suspect us of purposing to issue forth, we might, when daylight dawned, make an attack upon their guns, and if we could spike these the assault would probably cease." The attempt was determined upon.

The Roundhead infantry were disposed behind as well as in front of the castle, so as to prevent the escape of the besieged; but the camp was at a distance of some four hundred yards.
The chains of the drawbridge across the moat were oiled, as were the bolts of the doors, and at three in the morning the gate was opened, and the drawbridge lowered across the moat.