The moment dad and Captain Buncombe heard Rollo’s howl and our cry, they jumped up again like lightning, and began hitting out right and left at the brigands who now surrounded us; and Mr Moynham was not behind, I can tell you! He butted one big chap right in the pit of the stomach, and sent him tumbling down the defile, his body rattling against the stones, and he swearing like mad all the time. Bob and I scrambled at them as best we could, catching hold of their legs and tripping them up; but they were too many for us, for the cowardly guides did not stir hand or foot to help us, but lay stretched like logs along the ground, although they were unbound. We were certain that they were in league with the robbers; and so, without doubt, they were, for, if they had only assisted us, now that their assailants had dropped their firearms, and were engaged in a regular rough-and-tumble fight, we could have mastered them, I’m sure, as, counting Bob and myself in, we were nearly man for man as many as they were.
The struggle did not last long, although dad and the captain held out bravely to the last, flooring the brigands one after another, and knocking them down as if they had been nine-pins. They were presently tied securely, with their arms behind them, and menaced with death if they stirred, by a brawny ruffian touching each of their heads with a pistol barrel. As for Bob and me, they did not think it necessary to tie us.
“Well, this is a delightful ending to our picnic,” said Mr Moynham in lugubrious tones, as we all lay on the ground, with the exception of the guides, who appeared to mingle freely with the robbers, who were grouped in picturesque attitudes around us, leaning on their carbines. “I wonder what’s their little game?”
The leader presently gave an order, and our seniors were then each lifted on to a horse or mule, and tied securely there.
“At all events,” said Mr Moynham, who kept up his spirits still wonderfully, “we sha’n’t fall off, that’s one comfort, and so we’ll have the less bruises after the scrimmage!”
Although the chief brigand scowled at me, he allowed me to lift poor Rollo, who was not dead as I had feared, and I bandaged his neck where the wound was with my handkerchief, and took him up in front of me.
The leader then spoke vehemently in his own language to one of the treacherous guides, who approached dad as if to speak.
“Away, scoundrel!” said dad, wrathfully. “Don’t speak to me; I would kill you if I were free, for leading us into this ambush!”
The man, however, urged again by the chief, who raised his pistol ominously at dad, approached him once more.
“The Albanian chief says that if twenty thousand piastres apiece, or one hundred thousand piastres in all, are not paid for you by sunset here to-morrow evening, you shall all be shot in cold blood, and your doom be on your own heads.”