As if by the touch of a magic wand, a crowd sprang up around them; respectable passers-by, the pickets of the Kent Street gang on duty in the Borough, unwashed men and women who had been seeking shelter under shop-blinds, the doctor's boy, who had been maltreated and had a claim to urge for damages, a fish-woman, two tradesmen with their aprons on fresh from business, and shoals of boys who might have dropped from heaven, so suddenly did they take up the best places, and assume an interest in the adventure.
The prowler turned pale, and flinched a little as Sidney approached, flinched more as the audience seized the thread of discussion and expressed its comments more vociferously.
"Punch his head if he don't 'pologize, sir—throw him into the mud, sir—I'd cure him of coming after my gal—knock the bloke's hat off, and jump on it—lock him up!"
The prowler saw his danger; he had heard a great deal of the mercies of a London mob, and it was hemming him in now—and, like most men of the prowling class, he was at heart a coward. He succumbed.
"I never intended to insult the lady—if I have uttered a word to offend her, I am very sorry. It is all a misconception. But if the lady considers that I have taken a liberty in offering—in offering," he repeated, rather disturbed in his harangue by a violent shove from behind on to the unhappy doctor's boy, upon whose feet he alighted, "a common courtesy, I apologise with all my heart. I——"
"That will do, sir," was the curt response; "you have had a narrow escape. Take it as a lesson."
Sidney was glad to back out of the absurd position into which he had thrust Harriet, to draw her hand through his arm and hasten away, offering a a hundred excuses to her for his imprudence and impulsiveness.
He had not moved twenty yards with her when the yell of the mob—and the mob in that end of London possesses the finest blood-curdling yell in the world—startled him and all within half a mile of him. It was a dull night, and the wild elements of street life were fond of novelty; a swell had been caught insulting a British female in distress, and the unwashed hates swells like poison. An apology was not sufficient for the lookers-on; prostration on bended knees and hands outstretched would not have done; sackcloth and ashes vowed for the remainder of the delinquent's existence, would have been treated with contumely—all that was wanted was an uproar. The boys wanted an uproar because it was natural to them; the representatives of Kent Street, because it was in the way of trade, and one or two respectable gents had become interested in the dispute, and wore watch-chains; the women, because "he had not been sarved out as he desarved, the wretch!"
So the prowler, backing out of the crowd, met with a sledge-hammer hand upon his hat, and found his hat off, and mud in his face, and then fists, and finally an upheaving of the whole mass towards him, sending him into the roadway like a shell from an Armstrong gun. There was no help for it, the prowler must run, and run he did, pursued by the terrible mob and that more terrible yell which woke up every recess in the Borough; and in this fashion the pursuer and the pursued sped down the muddy road towards the Elephant and Castle.
An empty Hansom cab offered itself to the runaway; he leaped in whilst it was being slowly driven down the Borough, and dashed his fist through the trap.