There arose a rough laugh, and if my ears were true, a rum-sodden laugh. I turned my head, and there, a hundred yards to our rear, came rolling and stumbling the drunken crew whom Noah had been at pains to show me in the Indian Queen. Over my shoulder I watched them for a moment. They were in sottish glee, and would shout, and now and then troll a bar or two of some pot-house ballad.
My nature was on watch in a moment; I suspected how these ruffians would be after us. We were in a lonely strip of trees, and no folk near the spot but just ourselves—a safe theatre for villainy. I counted our roaring drunkards; there were eleven, and among them I could pick out the yard-wide shoulders of that gladiator to whom Noah had pointed.
Peg, as well as I, could see these creatures coming; but then she had not my news, and would only know them for roysterers returning from some drinking bout. I glanced at Peg; her face was bright and free, and for all her late lamentations over society and its dead cold wastes of proper snow, mighty wide awake and vivacious. I never beheld her more brisk; in the white moonlight her picture shone out as clear as day.
Peg was on my right arm. I began to go more slowly so that those who followed should overtake us, and to push a little off the path to the right, for I would have Peg out of the midst of them when trouble fell.
As I would loiter and go with a slower foot, the eleven behind quickened their step. They came on, roaring and jesting among themselves; not together, but by twos and threes, and straggling along the path like geese. I think it was their plan to push ahead of Peg and me and bar our way; for they went lumbering and lurching by, making a rude joke to toss from tongue to tongue, but no one to so much as look on us direct until the last one came up. He would be lagging behind for a purpose, too, since he was gone on no more than a yard ahead of Peg and myself when he sings out to his fellows with an oath:
“D'ye see whom we have here? Why, here is our big lover and his light o' love—no less!”
With that, stepping before Peg, I seized the scoundrel with my left hand. It was his arm above the elbow I took hold on, and a soft snick like a snapping of the clay stem of a pipe, and the grotesque way in which the hand dangled, palm outward, showed me how I had broken the bone.
The creature's scream brought the others to his rescue. That was no loss, for it would have been their plan from the first to return and fall upon me. As they came on in a blundering file, whirling forth oaths, I took the one in my hand with a grip about his middle. Heaving him over my head, I dashed him at the others as they drew near. The villain would do beautifully as a projectile, too, for he mowed down three like a chain-shot, his boot making a fine gash in the face of one of them.
On the point of going forward to meet the others, I was stayed by a shout, loud and musical, yet much like the muffled roar of some deep-lunged animal. Then came one from the the rear with the speed of an arrow at top flight. In the moonlight I could tell him for Rivera the son of that Spanish bull-fighter, running like a stag. He flashed by me; and the next moment he struck one of the roughs with his fist. It was a hammer-like blow, and that one who would stop it fell with the crash of a tree.