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mock him, and one dog danced a pace forward, bristling. Suddenly he
turned, and uttering certain words in the dialect of the underways,
words incomprehensible to Elizabeth, he made for the dogs. There was a
sudden cessation of the barking, a growl and a snapping. Elizabeth saw
the snarling head of the foremost dog, its white teeth and retracted
ears, and the flash of the thrust blade. The brute leapt into the air
and was flung back.
Then Denton, with a shout, was driving the dogs before him. The sword
flashed above his head with a sudden new freedom of gesture, and then he
vanished down the staircase. She made six steps to follow him, and on
the landing there was blood. She stopped, and hearing the tumult of dogs
and Denton's shouts pass out of the house, ran to the window.
Nine wolfish sheep-dogs were scattering, one writhed before the porch;
and Denton, tasting that strange delight of combat that slumbers still
in the blood of even the most civilised man, was shouting and running
across the garden space. And then she saw something that for a moment he
did not see. The dogs circled round this way and that, and came again.
They had him in the open.
In an instant she divined the situation. She would have called to him.
For a moment she felt sick and helpless, and then, obeying a strange
impulse, she gathered up her white skirt and ran downstairs. In the hall
was the rusting spade. That was it! She seized it and ran out.
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