"Why, water-drinking—"
Boom! went a three-talent ball. With a rumble and roar a section of the wall slid into ruin. When the cloud of dust had cleared, the wall looked as if some Titan had taken a huge bite out of it. From a height of twenty feet it swooped down to a mere ten, then up again. Below the broken section lay a heap of shattered stone and mortar, providing attackers with a ready-made ramp.
Trumpets blasted. Demetrios pulled his men together for an assault, while our officers shouted orders to repair the break and to mass to repel the attack.
Makar and his men, heedless of missiles, swarmed into the gap and began building it up again, stone by stone. Others brought timber balks and some of the three-talent balls that Demetrios had been shooting at us, to build into the wall. Rhodian infantry gathered around the break.
I said: "Boys, to cover the base of the wall at the break, we must move our piece so it hangs out over the waterfront."
"How shall we do that?" said Onas.
"Do you see yonder break in the parapet? We'll slide old Lightning down there and push the right-hand strut of the base out through the gap."
Berosos: "Take care that you overbalance the engine not, lest it topple from the wall."
With rope and crowbar we did what I had said. Now, by shooting with the trough horizontal, I could make our darts skim the top of the parapet at a narrow angle and drop down where I expected the foe to swarm.
The Antigonians advanced again. First came the two sea towers and the sea engine bearing the dart throwers. With them came the troopships. Ahead flew clouds of missiles, skipping and bouncing from the masonry; an arrow stood quivering in Lightning's outer upright.
Two troopships rowed up between the sea towers and put out gangplanks. The soldiers tumbled ashore and clattered across the pavement, crying: "Eleleu!" Some carried ladders. A standard-bearer, holding aloft a golden eagle on a pole, led each company. Their officers harkened them on with shouts.
They rushed towards the break in the wall, their horsehair crests nodding. The sunlight, flashing on their bronze cuirasses, made them look like a swarm of glossy beetles. The cry arose from the defenders:
"Ladder! Ladder!"
Two other troopships, seeking places to put their men ashore, struck hidden rocks. As they settled, their men screamed for help; some cast off their armor to swim.
Those who had rushed to the break in the wall placed their ladders against the pile of debris and climbed, holding high their small Macedonian shields to ward off missiles.
"Shoot!" I cried.
A dart from Lightning plunged into the crowd. As nobody else had turned his catapult at such an angle as mine, Lightning was the only heavy weapon that, at the moment, bore upon the attackers.
The Rhodians on the wall shot arrows and hurled twirl spears down upon the Antigonians, who swarmed like ants up the pile of tailings. As the Antigonians neared the top of the pile, they became jammed together, for the pile tapered to the top. Lightning struck again and again, but for every man who fell, two took his place. Presently an Antigonian hoisted himself into the gap; then another.
We shot the last of our six darts. Every one was a fair hit, but when they were gone there was nothing for us to do.
"Where's the polluted Phaon?" I cried.
As the Antigonians began to climb down the inner side of the gap in the wall, missile troops on the ground inside let fly such a storm of arrows, scorpion bolts, and bullets that several of the invaders were slain, tumbling head over heels to the ground inside. The rest shrank back.
Other Antigonians sought to climb up the sides of the break to reach the top of the wall. Our soldiers jabbed down at them with spears.
"Chares!" screamed Mys. "Ladder!"
The loader was reaching over the parapet and slashing at an Antigonian on a ladder, not three cubits away. Sweat ran down the mercenary's red face from under his crested helm. He caught Mys's blows on his shield, raised himself to the level of the parapet, shifted his spear from his left to his right hand, and prepared to spring.
I snatched a crowbar and rushed at the man. The point took him in the chest. As he started to topple, he caught the top of the ladder. I pushed; man and ladder fell over backwards.
"Did somebody call me?" said Phaon.
He and another man appeared, each bearing a bundle of darts on his shoulder. Phaon dropped his bundle at my feet and ran off, followed by his companion, while more Rhodians ran up to tip baskets of stones over the parapet on the heads of the attackers below.
"Resume shooting!" I cried. "Cock your piece ..."
We renewed our bombardment. Some darts, assembled in haste, were the wrong size. We shot them anyway, making what allowances we could for differences of weight.
On the far side of the gap several ladders were raised against the wall. Some were thrown down; but the Antigonians gained the tops of others, because our men were too few there. A din arose: shouts and screams, and the clatter of steel against steel and bronze. I raised our range and began dropping darts among the crowd around the feet of these ladders.
Then help came. Several of the merchant ships on which we had erected catapults, by paying out and hauling in their mooring ropes, had turned themselves around so that their catapults bore upon the attackers on the waterfront. Darts began streaking in from several directions. They scarcely could miss. Missiles plowed through the mass, sometimes striking down two or three men at once.
Rhodian archers pushed through the crowd atop the wall towards the break, to ply their bows. I glimpsed Gobryas, wearing the garb of a Rhodian archer over his trousers, bending his powerful Persian bow towards the foe. Soon the Antigonians who had crowded into the gap in the wall began to tumble out of it and to slide and stumble down the pile of debris.
An officer bawled in my ear: "Shoot faster! They break!" The Antigonians on the waterfront milled uncertainly, stumbling over the bodies and catapult balls which littered the pavement. Some straggled back to their ships despite the shouts and blows of their officers.
The gate opened; our infantry sallied. The Antigonians scuttled for their ships. Those who had gained the top of the wall were cut off, and soon those who survived gave up. Demetrios' attacking force withdrew once more, leaving the waterfront carpeted with bronze-clad bodies and puddled with crimson pools.
The Rhodians pried the bronze beaks off the wrecked Antigonian ships for trophies and burnt the wrecks, lest Demetrios' people tow them away and repair them.
Seven days passed; the fourth year of the 118th Olympiad began. Demetrios repaired his engines and ships while Rhodes busied herself with rebuilding her defenses.
Despite the continuing bombardment from Demetrios' stone throwers, Makar and his men, sweating like horses in the heat of Hekatombaion, labored on the gap in the wall. It was hard to get much done during the day, especially after one of the men was mashed flat by a three-talent ball. Instead, they worked all night, by torchlight, when the catapult crews could not see to correct their ranges.
Makar's crew not only filled the gap in the harbor wall with well-fitted stones; they also raised the entire wall and its parapet by six feet. Running short of stone of the proper sizes, they dismantled the half-built temple of Aphrodite, with apologies to the goddess and promises of a better temple when the siege should be won. Mys asked Bias:
"Aren't you afraid the goddess will smite us with impotence?"
The carpenter gave him a wry smile. "When you get to my age, son, it don't make enough difference to matter."
Then, on the morn of the eighth day after his last retreat, Demetrios' fleet again appeared before the Great Harbor. The heavy artillery opened up, pounding the harbor wall.