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"Look out!" said everybody, fencing at random and hitting at
nothing. "Hold him! Shut the door! Don't let him loose! I got
something! Here he is!" A perfect Babel of noises they made.
Everybody, it seemed, was being hit all at once, and Sandy Wadgers,
knowing as ever and his wits sharpened by a frightful blow in the
nose, reopened the door and led the rout. The others, following
incontinently, were jammed for a moment in the corner by the
doorway. The hitting continued. Phipps, the Unitarian, had a front
tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured in the cartilage of his ear.
Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning, caught at something
that intervened between him and Huxter in the melee, and prevented
their coming together. He felt a muscular chest, and in another
moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot out into the
crowded hall.
"I got him!" shouted Jaffers, choking and reeling through them all,
and wrestling with purple face and swelling veins against his
unseen enemy.
Men staggered right and left as the extraordinary conflict swayed
swiftly towards the house door, and went spinning down the
half-dozen steps of the inn. Jaffers cried in a strangled
voice--holding tight, nevertheless, and making play with his
knee--spun around, and fell heavily undermost with his head on
the gravel. Only then did his fingers relax.
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