“Keep back, some of you!” shouted Nick in a tone of thunder. “Twenty against one! Aren’t you men? You can’t be Americans, or you wouldn’t act like cowards!”
His taunt may have shamed one or two of the better sort. But, as a matter of fact, there were very few Americans in the mob. The effect of this speech was to bring half a dozen of the big fellows—ironworkers, and, therefore, powerful—against the detective.
These men had a rough idea of how to use their fists, and they pressed hard against Nick, who had to bring all his skill into play to defend himself. It was a lively battle, and the shouts of boys, girls, and men and women outside, together with the squeal of a police whistle, helped to make it more so.
Bob Gordon might have backed out now and got away if he had chosen to do so. He had a sprained wrist, and his wind had been mostly knocked out of him. But he came up to the side of Nick, anyhow.
Chick and Patsy were both fighting like heroes. But the weight of numbers was beginning to tell. There were too many for these four, especially with one of them practically disabled. It began to look dubious for Nick’s side.
It was at this moment that a tall, rawboned man of about thirty, in a blue sweater, who had been driving past the gateway on a truck, saw what was going on inside the yard, and decided that it was the place for him to break in.
He swung off his truck and hurled himself through the gateway as if he had been sent for. He was a big, two-fisted truckman, with a natural love of fighting, which had had plenty of encouragement in many a combat with other truckmen, and with rough-and-tumble battlers among longshoremen on the various water fronts.
“Come on, you dubs!” he bellowed. “Catch ’em as I hand ’em out. Take ’em anywhere you like—on your chin, in your eye, on the nose, or anywhere. They’re all free, and every one is warranted full weight and hundred per cent the real thing!”
Evidently overjoyed at the prospect of a scrap that might last for an hour, the big truckman, whose arms were long and his fists like wooden mallets, ranged himself alongside Nick and his forces, and soon turned the tide of battle.
Five minutes later it looked like a regular rout for the enemy.