At the sight, there rose from the crowd a wailing cry, quite
different from its former voice. Galpy's teeth set and his cricket
bat went up in the air.
"There'll be killing for this," he said. "I know these blightehs.
That yell means blood. We must make a bolt for it. Is this all
there is of us?"
At the moment of his asking, it was. One half a second later, it
wasn't, as the last of the legation's stubborn bars yielded, the
door burst open, and the four Americans tumbled out at the charge,
Cluff yelling insanely, Carroll in deadly quiet, Sherwen alertly
scanning the adversaries for identifiable faces, and Elder
Brewster still imperiling his soul by the fervor of his language.
Each was armed with such casual weapons as he had been able to
catch up. Carroll, a leap in advance of the rest, encountered an
Indian drover, half-dodged a swinging blow from his whip, and sent
him down with a broken shoulder from a chop with a baseball club
that he had found in the hallway. A bull-like charge had carried
Cluff deep among the Caracunans, where he encountered a huge peon.
whom he seized and flung bodily over the iron guard of a samon
tree, where the man hung, yelling dismally.
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