EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
in here. We shall have some advantage if we anticipate their assault by a sortie of our own.”
A dull thud upon the door at the opposite end of the room brought the startled attention of the defenders to that quarter. The oak door sagged and the stone walls trembled to the impact.
Cassius Hasta smiled wryly. “They have brought a ram,” he said.
And now a heavy projectile shook the outer wall and a piece of plaster crumbled to the floor upon the inside—the ballista had come into action. Once again the heavy battering-ram shivered the groaning timbers of the door and the inmates of the room could hear the legionaries chanting the hymn of the ram to the cadence of which they swung it back and heaved it forward.
The troops in the garden went about their duty with quiet, military efficiency. Each time a stone from the ballista struck the wall there was a shout, but there was nothing spontaneous in the demonstration, which seemed as perfunctory as the mechanical operation of the ancient war-engine that delivered its missiles with almost clocklike regularity.
The greatest damage that the ballista appeared to be doing was to the plaster on the inside of the wall, but the battering-ram was slowly but surely shattering the door at the opposite side of the room.
“Look,” said Metellus, “they are altering the line of the ballista. They have discovered that they can effect nothing against the wall.”
“They are aiming at the window,” said Praeclarus.
“Those of you who are in line with the window lie down upon the floor,” commanded Tarzan. “Quickly! the hammer is falling upon the trigger.”
The next missile struck one side of the window, carrying away a piece of the stone, and this time the result was followed by an enthusiastic shout from the legionaries in the garden.
“That’s what they should have done in the beginning,” commented Hasta. “If they get the walls started at the edge
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