“Backs to trees! Stand with backs to trees!” shouted Bevis, hitting out furiously. “We shall win! Here, Bill!”
They planted themselves, these four, Bevis, Mark, Fred, and Bill, with their backs to the great trunk of the sycamore, standing a foot or two in front of it for room to swing their swords, and a little way apart for the same reason. The sycamore formed a bulwark so that none could attack them in rear.
The column, as it recoiled, widened out, and came on again in a semicircle, surrounding them.
“Give in!” shouted Val. “We’re ten to one!” (that was not numerically correct.) “Give in! You’ll all be prisoners in a minute!”
“That we shan’t,” said Bill, fetching him a side way slash.
“If we could only get Scipio up,” said Mark. “Where is he? Can’t we get him?”
“I forgot him,” said Bevis. “There, take that,” as he warded a cut and returned it. “I forgot him. Look out, Fred, that’s it. Hurrah! Mark,” as Mark made a successful cut. “How stupid.” In the heat and constant changes of the combat they had totally forgotten Cecil and his cohort.
“Why, we’ve been fighting two to three,” said Bill, “and they haven’t done us yet.”
“But we mean to,” said Tim, and Bill shrank involuntarily under an unexpected knock.
“Some more of you—there,” shouted Ted Pompey, as he came to himself, and saw a number of his soldiers in the rear watching the combat. “You,”—in a rage,—“you go round behind and worry them there; and some of you get up in the tree and hit down.”