Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/282

Rh obstacle, breaking through all vegetation, rushing like the wind over the width of the country. Then, rapidly as a lasso is thrown, they sprang upon him as he passed; his arms, his limbs, his body, were bound and knotted with cords ere he could cast off one of the score of hands that seized him; fettered in an instant, with the naked blades flashing round him, he stood like a wild horse netted by guachos, his muscles panting under the close-drawn bonds, his eyes wide-opened on his captors, red and glaring and senseless. There was no escape possible.

He stood a moment, looking vacantly down on his bound limbs and the savage wolf-eyes of the soldiery. All consciousness seemed dead in him; he was passive from the sheer intoxication of suffering, and he was weak in his body also, for from a wound on his shoulder blood was oozing through his shirt. Yet, as he felt the withes on his limbs, he fought against his captors on the sheer instinct of combat, with his head dropped like a bull of Aragon when it charges to give to the torreador the fatal blow of the cogida, and with his firm white teeth, the only weapon left him, clenched hard and fast at the throat of the soldier nearest him.

For some minutes there was a struggle that made even the bold veins of the Roman boy run chill—