Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/135

 the bottle's neck. There was a snap and a quick crunching sound. The captain gasped for breath, for Doctor Syn had bitten through the glass neck, and seized the bottle by the broken end. Slowly he dragged one leg from the kneeling position and pushed it out before him; slowly he fixed his other foot like a firm spring behind him. Terrified, Mr. Rash sprang back against the wall, with the blood still trickling from his cut lip, and motionless stood the girl Imogene, with the candle held above her head. Syn was in position to spring. Rash was waiting to be seized, and nothing moved in the room save the slowly oozing blood on the schoolmaster's lip, vivid against the pale lantern jaw, and the blood and ground glass that glistened in a saliva stream that hung from the cleric's mouth. Nothing else moved at all, except perhaps the light shed by the flickering candle, which danced shadows of the two weird men upon the whitewashed wall And then with a hissing sound Syn made a leap, swinging the bottle as he did so, and bringing it down with a sickening crash on the white face before him. Down went Rash, senseless, blinded with blood and the shivered glass. Then Syn laughed, and sang at the top of his voice: