They will be so surprised that no real resistance can be offered to us.

Now let us advance." So saying Cnut led the way upstairs, followed by the foresters, Cuthbert, as before, allowing five or six of them to intervene between him and the leader.

He carried his short sword and a quarterstaff, a weapon by no means to be despised in the hands of an active and experienced player.
Presently, after mounting some fifty or sixty steps, they issued on the platform of the keep.

Here were gathered some thirty or forty men, who were so busied in shooting with crossbows, and in working machines casting javelins, stones, and other missiles upon the besiegers, that they were unaware of the addition to their numbers until the whole of the foresters had gathered on the summit, and at the order of Cnut suddenly fell upon them with a loud shout.
Taken wholly by surprise by the foe, who seemed to have risen from the bowels of the earth by magic, the soldiers of the Baron of Wortham offered but a feeble resistance.

Some were cast over the battlement of the keep, some driven down staircases, others cut down, and then, Cuthbert fastening a small white flag he had prepared to his quarterstaff, waved it above the battlements.
Even now the combatants on the outer wall were in ignorance of what had happened in the keep; so great was the din that the struggle which had there taken place had passed unnoticed; and it was not until the fugitives, rushing out into the courtyard, shouted that the keep had been captured, that the besieged became aware of the imminence of the danger.
[Illustration: CUTHBERT FASTENED A SMALL WHITE FLAG TO HIS QUARTER-STAFF AND WAIVED IT ABOVE THE BATTLEMENTS.] Hitherto the battle had been going well for the defenders of the castle.