He knocked down by main strength of arm and sheer weight of hand the two who had hold of Sir Carnaby, and were dragging him helplessly along the street; and then, with the aid of Travers, he assisted him towards an archway which opened off the street, while the rabble closed in upon them, showering blows and execrations, but impeding each other in their mad efforts; thus man after man of them, uttering groans and shouts, went down before the regular facers, dealt straight out from the shoulder by Chute and Travers into the eyes and jaws of their assailants, who had a wholesome Continental terror of 'the art de box,' as the French name it, while breathless, bewildered, and certainly appalled to find himself so suddenly become the sole victim of a dreadful mob, Sir Carnaby stood between his two defenders, his polite and deprecatory gestures (for voice he had none), and the elegance of his delicate white hands, as seen in the torchlight, exciting only the ridicule of the unwashed rabble.
Through the archway, which was narrow, they conveyed Sir Carnaby, and by their united strength succeeded in closing the door, and by an iron bar that was behind it completely excluding the crowd, who continued to shout and rave without as they surged against it and beat upon it with sticks and stones. Anon the crash of glass was heard, and then the cries of women, as the house itself was assailed.
Infuriated to find that their victim or victims, whom many of them now supposed to be some of their wealthy and oppressive monopolists, had escaped them, the blows upon the door were redoubled, but its strength baffled them.
'It is me they want, Chute, because I struck that rascal at the hotel,' said Sir Carnaby: 'leave me—they will tear you to pieces to get at me, the German brutes!'
'Leave you, Sir Carnaby! Never! If, even were you a stranger, I should stand by you, how much more am I bound to do so when you are the father of Clare Collingwood! And if I cannot by main strength save, I shall die with you—game, an Englishman to the last!'
They were in a court which had no outlet. From it an open stair led to a species of ancient gallery overlooking the street; it was a species of balcony, with pillars and arches carved of stone, like those in front of the wonderfully quaint Rathhaus, which was not far from it, and was built in the middle of the fifteenth century.
Their appearance in this place elicited a roar from the mob some fifteen feet below them, and hundreds of dirty hands were shaken clenched towards them, and hundreds of excited and upturned faces were visible in the red, uncertain glare of the torches that were held still by five or six of the rioters. But matters now began to look very serious; for the crowd was seen to part like the waves of the sea as a ladder was borne through it and planted against the wall. Then five or six men began to mount at once, while others pressed forward to follow, determined to visit the fugitives by escalade.
Travers looked bewildered, and Sir Carnaby still more so; but Trevor Chute, by habit, profession, and nature, had all that coolness in front of immediate peril, and utter indifference of personal risk, which made him renowned in his regiment and the idol of the soldiers, and he had been in many critical situations, where caution and decision had to be combined with instant action.
The head and shoulders of the uppermost man on the ladder had barely appeared above the front of the balcony when Chute seized the former by its two uprights, and thrust it fairly outward from the wall. For a moment it oscillated, or seemed to balance itself, and then, describing a radius of about thirty feet or more, fell back among the crowd with its load of ruffians.
Then shrieks and the rattle of musketry were heard, as the Prussian guard arrived from the Rathhaus, and by orders of a burgomaster poured in a volley of some twenty muskets or so, on which the mob took to flight, and dispersed in all directions, leaving behind two or three dead men and the maimed wretches who had been on the upper portion of the ladder.