Upon this mass of terrified flesh the two hundred dogs flung themselves, through the nets the huntsmen stabbed at the nearest victims, behind the dogs the shouting hunters advanced to spear their game, the battue was on and I watched it till the last animal was flat. The few which, frenzied, doubled back through the dogs and hunters were met and killed by the beaters. Not one escaped.
As the battue ended up came the rush of beaters and our trees were soon surrounded by a crowd of eager, exultant, infuriated beaters and huntsmen.
Up the trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped, whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets, execrations and curses.
We stood, half fainting, utterly dazed, supported by the two or three captors who held each of us, but for whose clutches we should have collapsed on the earth.
We expected to be torn limb from limb, yet could not conjecture why we were the objects of such infuriated animosity. A beater clutching either elbow, a hand clutching my neck from behind, my knees knocking together, naked, bruised, bloody, gasping, fainting, I, like Agathemer, was haled a few paces to one corner of the pocket net. There we were held till the gentlemen came up out of the gully.
Up they came, a score of handsome young fellows, mostly each with his hat in his hand and mopping his forehead.
"Why!" the foremost of them cried. "These are not the men! These are not the men at all! They are not in the least like them!"
"Not in the least like Lupercus and Rufinus, certainly," another added.
"What a pack of asses you are!" cried a third, "to mishandle two strangers. Couldn't you look at them before you mauled them?"
"We all took them for Rufinus and Lupercus," the head huntsman rejoined. "Certainly they are desperate characters and runaways. Look at their backs."