He was a bigger boy than I. Taller and older, and he had had many a good fight at school no doubt; but my onslaught staggered him, and I drove him before me, striking at him as he reached the handles of my water-barrow, and he fell over them heavily.
This only enraged him, and he sprang up and received my next blow right in the face, to be staggered for the moment.
Then I don’t know what happened, only that my arms were going like windmills, that I was battering Courtenay, and that he was battering me; that we were down, and then up, and then down again, over and over, and fighting fiercely as a couple of dogs.
I think I was getting the best of it, when I began to feel weak, and that my adversary was hitting me back and front at once.
Then I realised that Philip had attacked me too, and that I was getting very much the worst of it in a sort of thunderstorm which rained blows.
Then the blows only came from one side, for there was a hoarse panting and the sound of heavy blows and scuffling away from me, while I was hitting out again with all my might at one boy instead of two.
All at once there was a crash and the rattle of an iron handle, and Courtenay went down. He had caught against the pail and fallen.
This gave me time to glance round and see in a half-blinded way that Philip was fighting with some other boy, who closed with him, and down they went together.
“Yah! yah! Cowards! cowards!” cried a voice that I well knew; and I saw giddily that Courtenay and Philip were running up the path, and that Shock was standing beside me.
“Well done!” cried another voice. “What a licking you two give ’em!”