But the noise he had heard was heavier than the rain that streamed upon the van's roof; there raged outside a fiercer storm than the thunder-clouds massing up on the wind. It had been many seasons brooding; it was charged to the point of bursting when the two factions came shouting from the marquee after the fight. Swept up with arrogant glee, the Stingo men paraded with hoots and jeers before the Maddox vans. A stone came flying through the gloom and cracked against a tall man's cheek. He stooped for it with a curse, sent it whistling, and the crash of glass that rewarded his aim was the signal for a scramble for stones—smashing of windows, splintering of wood.
There came a wild rush of men from behind the Maddox vans. Japhra, watching from his window, turned swiftly and took up the stout limb of ash he commonly carried. He gave it a deft twirl in a tricky way that spoke of the days when single-stick work figured at the fairs, and looked at Ima with his tight-lipped smile.
"The sticks are out!" he said grimly. "I knew it would end thus;" and as he opened the door and dropped to the ground there came to him from many throats the savage cry—glad to the tough old heart of him that once had told Percival, "Ay, a camp fight with the sticks out and the heads cracking is a proper game for a man"—of "Sticks! Sticks!"; and one that came running past him toward the press shouted to him: "Japhra? Good on yer! The sticks are out! The ——s ha' come at us with sticks!"
It was Snowball White. "This way with it, boy," Japhra told him as they ran. "Thy stick thus—with a hand at each end across thy head. Crack at a pate right hand or left when thou seest one—then back to overhead to guard thine own again. I have been out with the sticks. I know the way of it."
III
Weight of numbers had told their tale when Percival got a glimpse of the fierce work.
"I'm fit—I'm absolutely fit, I tell you!" he had told Ima when, awakened by the sounds that now had raged close to the Stingo vans, and recognising them for what they were, he had shaken off her protests and entreaties and had come to the scene.
"Lie here while they're fighting us! Why, you'd be ashamed of me, you know you would!" he had cried; but when he was outside, and had gone a few steps in the rain that now was sheeting down, he was informed how weak he was, and was caught and spun dizzily back by a sudden mob of men driven towards him, and was held dizzy and fainting by the panting breaths and by the reek of sweating bodies that wedged him where he stood.
He was packed in a mob of his Stingo mates, half of whom could not free their arms for use and about three sides of whom the Maddox mob were baying, driving them further and further back against the vans with sticks that rattled on sticks and on heads like the crackling of trees in a wood fire. Two forms, taller than the rest, upstood clearly—near Percival old Stingo, hatless, blood on a cheek, and throating "Hut! Hut, boys! Hut!" with each stroke he made; further away Boss Maddox, pale, grim and iron of countenance as ever even in this fury, and using his long reach to strike with deadly precision at heads half a dozen men in front of him.
The two were working towards one another, Percival could see, and a sudden surge of the crowd brought him almost within reach of Boss Maddox's stick. It was at that moment that he felt a jostling at his ribs as of someone burrowing past him from behind, looked down and recognised Egbert Hunt—shut in by accident and trying to escape, Percival guessed.