Down came the leaded stick on the back of his bridle hand, cutting it open, grazing and bruising the flesh. With an oath he dropped the reins and seized them in his right hand.
"Rather neatly done!" he remarked, smiling at the dismay in Roy's eyes. "Ought to have floored him, though—the murdering brute!"
"Lance, you'd no business——"
"Oh, drop it. This isn't polo. It's a game of Aunt Sally. No charge for a shy——!" As he spoke, a sharp fragment of brick struck his cheek and drew blood. "Damn them. Getting above themselves. If it rested with me I'd charge. We can hold 'em, though. Straighten the line."
"But your hand——"
"My hand can wait. I've got another." And he rode on leaving Roy with a burning inner sense as of actual coals of fire heaped on his unworthy self.
But urgent need for action left no leisure for thought. Somehow the line was straightened; somehow they extricated themselves from the embarrassing attentions of the mob. Carnegie returned with armed police; and four files were lined up in front of the troops; the warning clearly given; the response—fresh uproar, fresh showers of stones....
Then eight shots rang out—and it sufficed.
At the voice of the rifle, the sting of buckshot, valour and fury evaporated like smoke. And directly the crowd broke, firing ceased. A few were wounded; one was killed—and carried off with loud lamentations. An ordered advance, with fixed bayonets, completed the effect that nothing else on earth could have produced:—and the Grand Processional was over.
It emerged from the Báthi Gate a shadow of itself, having left more than half its numbers on guard at vital points along the route.