[CHAPTER II.]
DISTURBERS OF THE NIGHT.
"I will have the wench."
"If you can get her."—The Coxcomb.
The captain gave instructions, as he and his pupils strode forward. The two boys with the lights were left behind to take shelter in a porch, so that the peace-breakers might advance in the greater darkness. It was enough for their purpose that they had the lanterns of the watch to guide them.
The watchmen came trudging on in ranks of two. Presently there could be heard, from somewhere among them, a voice of lamentation, protest, and pleading, with a sound of one stumbling against sundry ill-set paving-stones of the street.
"They have a prisoner," said the captain to his followers. "We'll make a rescue of this. Remember, lads, no swords to be used on these dotards; but do as I've told ye."
In another moment, and just when the watchmen seemed about to halt for consideration, but before their leader had made up his mind to cry, "Stand!" the captain shouted, "Now, boys, now; a rescue! a rescue!" and the roysterers rushed forward with a chorus of whoops.
The watch, composed for the most part of old men, had scarce time to huddle into a compact form when the gallants were upon them. The assailants, keeping up their shouting, made to seize the watchmen's bills, with which to belabour them about their heads and shoulders. One or two were successful in this; but others found their intended victims too quick, and were themselves the recipients of blows. These unfortunate ones, bearing in mind the captain's directions, essayed to snatch away lanterns, and to retaliate upon the watchmen's skulls; and whoever failed in this, rushed to close quarters, grasped an opponent's beard, and hung on with all weight and strength.
The captain's operations were directed against the pair who had immediate charge of the prisoner. Possessing himself of the bill of one, whom, by the same act, he caused to lose balance and topple over, he obtained the other's voluntary retreat by a gentle poke in the paunch. The prisoner himself proved to be a man of years, and of port; he had a fat, innocent face, and he showed, by his dress and every other sign that became visible when the captain held up a lantern before him, to be a gentleman. What such a guileless, well-fed old person could have done to fall afoul of the night-watch, Captain Ravenshaw could not imagine. For the time, the old person's astonishment and relief at being set free were too great to permit his speaking.
Meanwhile, Master Holyday, having been the last to come up, found the melée so suddenly precipitated, and so complete without his intrusion, that he stood back looking for a convenient place and time for him to plunge into it. But it seemed impossible for him to penetrate the edge of the scuffle, or to connect himself with it in any effective way. So he hung upon the skirts; until at last two of the watchmen, being simultaneously minded for flight, bore down upon him from out of the hurly-burly. He instinctively threw out his arms to stay their going; whereupon he found himself grappled with on either side, and from that instant he had so much to do himself that he lost all observation of the main conflict. Nor had the other fighters any knowledge of this side matter. But their own sport was over ere their wind was out; the watchmen, being mainly of shorter breath and greater prudence than their antagonists, soon followed the example of flight; and the gallants, soberer by sundry aches, smarts, and bruises, were left masters of the field. None of the watch was too much battered to be able to scamper off toward the Poultry.