Meanwhile Mr. Cavendish, whose proud spirit never greatly inclined him to the practice of peace, had prepared for battle; Springing aloft he knocked his heels together.

“Whoop!  I’m a man as can slide down a thorny locust and never get scratched!” he shouted.  This was equivalent to setting his triggers; then he launched himself nimbly and with enthusiasm into the thick of the fight.  It was Mr. Bunker’s unfortunate privilege to sustain the onslaught of the Earl of Lambeth.

The light from the Cavendish hearth continued to brighten the scene, for Polly was recklessly sacrificing her best straw tick.  Indeed her behavior was in every way worthy of the noble alliance she had formed.  Her cob-pipe was not suffered to go out and with Connie’s help she kept the six small Cavendishes from risking life and limb in the keel boat, toward which they were powerfully drawn.  Despite these activities she found time to call to Betty and Hannibal on the cabin roof.

“Jump down here; that ain’t no fittin’ place for you-all to stop in with them gentlemen fightin’!”

An instant later Betty and Hannibal stood on the raft with the little Cavendishes flocking about them.  Mr. Yancy’s quest of his nevvy had taken an enduring hold on their imagination.  For weeks it had constituted their one vital topic, and the fight became merely a satisfying background for this interesting restoration.

“Sho’, they’d got him!  Sho’—­he wa’n’t no bigger than Richard!  Sho’!”

“Oh!” cried Betty, with a fearful glance toward the keel boat.  “Can’t you stop them?”

“What fo’?” asked Polly, opening her black eyes very wide.

“Bless yo’ tender heart!-you don’t need to worry none, we got them strange gentlemen licked like they was a passel of children!  Connie, you-all mind that fire!”

She accurately judged the outcome of the fight.  The boat was little better than a shambles with the havoc that had been wrought there when Yancy and Carrington dropped over its side to the raft.  Cavendish followed them, whooping his triumph as he came.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE RAFT AGAIN

Yancy and Cavendish threw themselves on the sweeps and worked the raft clear of the keel boat, then the turbulent current seized the smaller craft and whirled it away into the night; as its black bulk receded from before his eyes the Earl of Lambeth spoke with the voice of authority and experience.

“It was a good fight and them fellows done well, but not near well enough.”  A conclusion that could not be gainsaid.  He added, “No one ain’t hurt but them that had ought to have got hurt.  Mr. Yancy’s all right, and so’s Mr. Carrington—­who’s mighty welcome here.”  The earl’s shock of red hair was bristling like the mane of some angry animal and his eyes still flashed with the light of battle, but he managed to summon up an expression of winning friendliness.