“Settle his hash!”
They were so fiercely intent on finishing George that they did not observe a danger that menaced themselves.
As a round shot cuts a lane through a column of infantry, so clean came two files of special constables with their short staves severing the mob in two—crick, crack, crick, crick, crick, crick, crack, crack. In three seconds ten heads were broken, with a sound just like glass bottles, under the short, deadly truncheon, and there lay half a dozen ruffians writhing on the ground and beating the Devil's tattoo with their heels.
“Charge back!” cried the head-policeman as soon as he had cut clean through.
But at the very word the cowardly crew fled on all sides yelling. The police followed in different directions a little way, and through this error three of the felled got up and ran staggering off. When the head-policeman saw that he cried out:
“Back, and secure prisoners.”
They caught three who were too stupefied to run, and rescued brutus from George, who had got him by the throat and was hammering the ground with his head.
“Let go, George,” cried Policeman Robinson, in some anxiety, “you are killing the man.”
“Oh, I don't want to kill him neither,” said George.
And he slowly withdrew his grasp, and left off hammering with the rascal's head, but looked at him as if he would have preferred to have gone on a little longer. They captured the three others.