Walter stood at the door, calming them. John Spence was on his feet ready to push out, but Nancy had hold of his hand, and Susan Clinton was clinging to him terrified. "All right, I'll stay, but I must get out," he said, torn between his desire to be in the fray, and the appeal, not of Susan's frightened cries, but of Nancy's silent call for protection.
"If you two will stay here, I'll go and see what's happening," said Dick. "It's all right, Virginia; there can't be many of them, and the men are there."
Another shot rang out above the sounds, hard by, of an angry struggle, and was followed by a cry of pain. Dick began to run towards the sound.
The moon now shining brightly made his progress easy. He saw three or four men, locked in a fierce struggle, and thought he recognised Frank as one of them. Then a cry to his right brought him round to see another group in combat. Someone was lying prone on the grass. A few yards from the still figure two others were reeling to and fro, and as he approached went down. The one underneath was wrapped in a long coat, the uppermost was unhampered, a giant figure of a man as he seemed, with a gun in his hands, on the barrels of which a shaft of moonlight glinted. He looked to be striking at the head of the other figure, and a cry for help rose up, urgently.
Dick sprang forward, but caught his foot on a root and fell. As he picked himself up, another figure ran past him with a raised cudgel.
"All right, sir, coming!"
The thick stick went down resoundingly on the ruffian's head, who let go of the gun-barrels, and turned with his arm raised to guard himself.
Dick had him by the neck, and was screwing his knuckles into the throat. He gulped, put hands like vices on to his sleeves, and kicked with a great iron-shod boot. Dick felt his shin peel through his thin trousers, but no pain. In a moment the keeper had thrown himself on to him, he ceased to struggle, and, Dick's fists relaxing their hold, choked out submission. "All right, you got me. You can give over now."
Humphrey rose from the ground, white and shaking, the blood trickling from a wound over his eyebrow. "The brute!" he said. "He'd have killed me. Lucky you came along. Where's Bobby?"
Bobby Trench lay on the dark ground, motionless, his arm stretched at a peculiar angle. As they bent over him, he fluttered an eyelid, then opened both. "Winged me," he said in a faint voice. "Ugh!" Then fainted again.