the powder and shot. Let him get up, mate. He won’t try to run, because he knows I should have to wipe his head with this little nutcracker. Why don’t you let him get up?—Yah! Quick! Look out!”
As the man spoke he swung round the gun and took aim at a figure which came rushing up. He drew trigger, but the hammer struck out a few sparks—that was all, for he had forgotten that it was not loaded.
What followed was very quickly done. Frank Mayne—for it was he—sprang at the savage ruffian who was holding Nic, and struck at him sidewise with the stout stick he held in his right hand. It did not seem much of a blow, but he delivered it in leaping through the air, just as a mounted soldier would direct a cut from his left.
The effect was wonderful: the man rolled over and over, and Nic sprang up, free to gaze after Mayne as he sprang at the other man.
The scoundrel struck at him savagely, and Nic heard the blow take effect. Then he had to fend for himself; for the man with the gun came on.
“Here,” he cried: “out with that powder and shot, or—”
He raised the piece with both hands by the barrel, and swung it back as if to get force for a blow. But, boy as he was, Nic sprang at him.
“Give me my gun!” he cried, and he was too close in for the blow to have any effect, as he seized the fellow by the throat and clung to him with all his might.
But Nic’s muscles were not yet hardened, and the man swung him round and round just as he liked, the boy gradually growing weaker; while, as he struggled, he saw with despair that Mayne was evidently getting the worse of it, for the man he had attacked partially disabled him at the first blow, and had now got his hand free and was striking brutally with the club.
Mayne evidently felt that he was beaten, but he clung to his adversary tenaciously, bore him backward with his hands fast at his throat, and, bending down his head to avoid the savage blows, he leaped forward so that he and the convict fell, the latter undermost.