“Let him go!” shouted the man with the goatee, named Bill, rushing up.
“Take that, then,” said Cameron, giving him a swift half-arm jab on the jaw, “and I'll come back for you again,” he added, as the man fell back into the arms of his friends.
“Forward!” said the Sergeant, falling in with Constable Scott behind Cameron and facing the crowd with drawn revolvers. The swift fierceness of the attack seemed to paralyse the senses of the crowd.
“Come on, boys!” yelled the goatee man, bloody and savage with Cameron's blow. “Don't let the blank blank blank rattle you like a lot of blank blank chickens. Come on!”
At once rose a roar from eight hundred throats like nothing human in its sound, and the crowd began to press close upon the Police. But the revolvers had an ugly appearance to those in front looking into their little black throats.
“Aw, come on!” yelled a man half drunk, running with a lurch upon the Sergeant.
“Crack!” went the Sergeant's revolver, and the man dropped with a bullet through his shoulder.
“Next man,” shouted the Sergeant, “I shall kill!”
The crowd gave back and gathered round the wounded man. A stream lay in the path of the Police, crossed by a little bridge.
“Hurry!” said the Sergeant, “let's make the bridge before they come again.” But before they could make the bridge the crowd had recovered from their momentary panic and, with wild oaths and yells and brandishing knives and guns, came on with a rush, led by goatee Bill.