A hand flew up above the crowd.  The Unspeakable Perk ducked sharply and just in time, as a knife struck the wall above him and clattered to the pavement.  Instantly he caught it up, but the blade had snapped off short.  As he stooped, one bold spirit rushed in.  Perkins met him with a straight lance-thrust of the staff, which sent him reeling and shrieking with pain back to his fellows.  But now another knife, and another, struck and fell from the wall at his back; badly aimed both, but presumably the forerunners of missiles, some of which would show better marksmanship.  The assailed man cast a swift, desperate look about him; the crowd closed in a little.  Obviously he must keep “eyes front.”

“To your left!  To your left!” The voice came to him clear and sweet above the swelling growl of the rabble.  “The doorway!  Get into the doorway, Mr. Beetle Man.”

A few paces away, how far Perkins could only guess, was the entrance to the house.  He surmised that, like many of the better-class houses, it had a small set-in door, at right angles to the main entrance, that would serve as a shallow shelter.  Without raising his eyes, he nodded comprehension, and began to edge along the wall, swinging his stout weapon.  As he went, he wondered what was keeping the others.  At that moment the others were frantically wrestling with the all-too-adequate bars with which Sherwen had reinforced the wide door.

Perkins, feeling with a cautious heel, found himself opposite the entry indicated by the voice.  Turning, he darted into the narrow embrasure.  Here he was comparatively safe from the missiles that were now coming from all directions.  On the other hand, he now lacked room to swing his formidable club.  The peons, with a shout, closed in to arm’s length.  Alone on her balcony, the girl turned her head away and cried aloud, hopelessly, for help.  She wanted to close her ears against the bestial shouts of a mob trampling to death a defenseless man, but her arms were of lead.  She listened and shivered.

Instead of the sound that she dreaded there came the ringing of hoofs on stones, followed by yells of alarm.  She opened her eyes to see Von Plaanden, bent forward in his saddle at the exact angle proper to the charge, urging his great horse down upon the mass of people as ruthlessly as if they had been so many insects.  Through the circle he broke, swinging his mount around beside the shallow doorway before which three Caracunans already lay sprawled, attesting the vigor of the defender’s final resistance.  Back of the horseman lay half a dozen other figures.  The Hochwaldian jerked out his sword and stood, a splendid spectacle.  Very possibly he was not wholly unmindful of his own pictorial quality or of the lovely American witness thereto.