“Ar—head the column and break the enemy’s ranks, ar—yes, are you all ready? Charge!”
As he gave the word they rushed forward in a compact body, and knocking down and pushing aside all who opposed them, succeeded in reaching the door. Here a short delay occurred while Bracy and his friend were opening it, and several of their late antagonists, irritated at the prospect of their escape, incited the others to attack them, so that before their egress was secured even the Irish lieutenant had had fighting enough to satisfy him, and the pale young man, having long since given himself up as a lost mutton, actually fainted with fear and over-exertion, and was dragged from under the feet of the combatants and carried out by Frere and Lewis, but for whom his mortal career would then and there have ended.
How, as they emerged into the street, a party of the police arrived and caused more confusion and more broken heads; and how Grande-ville and the Irishman on the one hand, and sundry Chartists, with Lewis’s late antagonist among them, on the other, were jointly and severally taken into custody and marched to the station-house, where they spent the night; and how Leicester contrived just in the nick of time to catch an intelligent cab, into which he, Lewis, Frere, and the fainting victim with the pallid physiognomy compressed themselves, and were conveyed rapidly from the scene of action, it boots not to relate: suffice it to say that a certain barrel of oysters, flanked by a detachment of pint bottles of stout, which had taken up their position on Frere’s dining-table during the absence of its master, sustained an attack about half-past eleven o’clock that night which proved that the mode in which their assailants had passed the evening had in no way impaired their respective appetites.
CHAPTER VI.—IN WHICH LEWIS ARUNDEL SKETCHES A COW, AND THE AUTHOR DRAWS A YOUNG LADY.
It was about noon on the day following the events narrated in the last chapter. Frere had departed to his office at the scientific institution some two hours since, and Lewis and Faust were looking out of the window, when a well-appointed cab dashed round the corner of a cross street, and a pair of lavender-coloured kid-gloves drew up a splendid bay horse, who arched his proud neck and champed the bit, impatient of delay, till a young male child in livery coat and top-boots rolled off the back of the vehicle and stationed itself before the animal’s nose, which act of self-devotion appeared to mesmerise him into tranquillity, and afforded the occupant of the cab time to spring out and knock at Frere’s door. Five minutes more saw Leicester and Lewis seated side by side and driving rapidly in the direction of Park Crescent.
“I don’t know how you feel this morning, Arundel,” began Leicester; “but positively when I first woke I could scarcely move. I’m black and blue all over, I believe.”
“I must confess to being rather stiff,” was the reply, “and my left hand is unproducible. I cut my knuckles against the nose of that tall fellow when I knocked him down, and shall be forced to wear a glove till it heals.”
“You did that uncommonly well,” returned Leicester; “the man was as strong as Hercules, and vicious into the bargain. He evidently had heard what you said about a black eye, and meant mischief. I was coming to help you when you finished him off.”