“Help the friends of the Jews! Save those who saved Rebecca and her children!”
Then again there came a rush of dark-browed men, who hissed and whistled as they fought.
So fierce was the rush that those who followed them were cut off, and Dick, glancing back over his shoulder, saw the mad-eyed priest, their leader, go down like an ox beneath the blow of a leaded bludgeon. A score of strides and they were out of the range of the firelight; another score and they were hidden by the gloom in the mouth of one of the narrow streets.
“Which way now?” gasped Hugh, looking back at the square where in the flare of the great fires Christians and Jews, fighting furiously, looked like devils struggling in the mouth of hell.
As he spoke a shock-headed, half-clad lad darted up to them and Dick lifted his axe to cut him down.
“Friend,” he said in a guttural voice, “not foe! I know where you dwell; trust and follow me, who am of the kin of Rebecca, wife of Nathan.”
“Lead on then, kin of Rebecca,” exclaimed Hugh, “but know that if you cheat us, you die.”
“Swift, swift!” cried the lad, “lest those swine should reach your house before you,” and, catching Hugh by the hand, he began to run like a hare.
Down the dark streets they went, past the great rock where the fires burned at the gates of the palace of the Pope, then along more streets and across an open place where thieves and night-birds peered at them curiously, but at the sight of their drawn steel, slunk away. At length their guide halted.
“See!” he said. “There is your dwelling. Enter now and up with the bridge. Hark! They come. Farewell.”