Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/101

Rh thrust at his breast, he parried it, and returned it by a cut across the lad's head, which brought the blood flowing in a blinding stream down the side of his face.

At that moment the hand-to-hand fight caught the attention of the rest of the combatants, who were struggling and scuffling in the tangle of gorse and bramble which choked up the dell at the bottom of the slope.

And a second figure, as unlike as possible to the first, rose up out of the mêleé, and came to help his young comrade. A giant he was, this loose-limbed, heavy-built sea-dog, with grizzled hair and coarse, sullen red face, who swore loud and deep as he came on, and made for Tregenna with a run, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other.

"Hey, Jack! Bill! Up with ye, lads, and let the cursed hound have as good as he's given us! 'Tis the lubber that shot poor Tom! Up, lads!"

Up started from the gorse bushes a fresh couple of ruffians, the one a long, lean, lanky fellow in corduroy breeches and an old rug-coat, that had rather the air of a highwayman than of a son of the sea; the other a little,