The posterns are narrow, and forty men at each should be able to keep back a host; and this would leave you a hundred and twenty to hold the main gates.

But if we have to man the walls, too, the matter would be serious.
"If we had time, we might pull down one of the outbuildings and build a thick wall behind the gates; but in an hour they will be attacking us again." He stood thinking for a minute or two, and then exclaimed: "I have it, Francois.

Let us at once kill a number of the cattle, and pile their carcasses up, two deep, against the gates.

They may burn them down if they like, then, but they can do nothing against that pile of flesh; the weight of the carcasses will keep them in a solid mass.

At any rate, we might do that at the two posterns.