I scarce know why, but I dragged me to the place where it fell, and, put the arrow-point in my bosom.

Smoke of wood and pitch darkened the light; they had come, then, to close quarters.

But once more rang the rattle of guns; the whizzing rush of stones, the smiting with axe or sword on wooden barrier and steel harness, the cries of war, "Mont joye St.Denis!" "St.George for England!" and slogans too, I heard, as "Bellenden," "A Home! a Home!" and then I knew the Scots were there, fighting in the front.

But alas, how different was the day when first I heard our own battle-cries under Orleans walls! Then I had my life and my sword in my hands, to spend and to strike; but now I lay a lonely prisoner, helpless and all but hopeless; yet even so I clashed my chains and shouted, when I heard the slogan.
Thus with noise and smoke, and trumpets blowing the charge or the recall, and our pipes shrieking the pibroch high above the din, with dust floating and plaster dropping from the walls of my cell till I was wellnigh stifled, the day wore on, nor could I tell, in anywise, how the battle went.

The main onslaught, I knew, was not on the gate behind the tower in which I lay, though that tower also was smitten of cannon-balls.
At length, well past mid-day, as I deemed by the light, came a hush, and then a thicker smoke, and taste of burning pitch-wood, and a roar as if all Paris had been blown into mid-air, so that my tower shook, while heavy beams fell crashing to earth.
Again came a hush, and then one voice, clear as a clarion call, even the voice of the Maid, "Tirez en avant, en avant!" How my blood thrilled at the sound of it! It must be now, I thought, or never, but the guns only roared the louder, the din grew fierce and fiercer, till I heard a mighty roar, the English shouting aloud as one man for joy, for so their manner is.