I made sure of my grip, not upon the refulgent overcoat, for I feared he might slip out of that, but upon the collars of his coat and waistcoat, which I clenched together in my right hand.  I knew that he was quick, and I suspected that he was “scientific,” but I did it before he had finished talking, and so made fast, with my mind and heart and soul set upon sticking to him.

My suspicions as to his “science” were perfervidly justified.  “You long-legged devil!” he yelled, and I instantly received a series of concussions upon the face and head which put me in supreme doubt of my surroundings, for I seemed to have plunged, eyes foremost, into the Milky Way.  But I had my left arm around his neck, which probably saved me from a coup de grace, as he was forced to pommel me at half-length.  Pommel it was; to use so gentle a word for what to me was crash, bang, smash, battle, murder, earthquake and tornado.  I was conscious of some one screaming, and it seemed a consoling part of my delirium that the cheek of Miss Anne Elliott should be jammed tight against mine through one phase of the explosion.  My arms were wrenched, my fingers twisted and tortured, and, when it was all too clear to me that I could not possibly bear one added iota of physical pain, the ingenious fiend began to kick my shins and knees with feet like crowbars.

Conflict of any sort was never my vocation.  I had not been an accessory-during-the-fact to a fight since I passed the truculent age of fourteen; and it is a marvel that I was able to hang to that dynamic bundle of trained muscles—­which defines Mr. Earl Percy well enough—­for more than ten seconds.  Yet I did hang to him, as Pere Baudry testifies, for a minute and a half, which seems no inconsiderable lapse of time to a person undergoing such experiences as were then afflicting me.

It appeared to me that we were revolving in enormous circles in the ether, and I had long since given my last gasp, when there came a great roaring wind in my ears and a range of mountains toppled upon us both; we went to earth beneath it.

“Ha! you must create violence, then?” roared the avalanche.

And the voice was the voice of Keredec.

Some one pulled me from underneath my struggling antagonist, and, the power of sight in a hazy, zigzagging fashion coming back to me, I perceived the figure of Miss Anne Elliott recumbent beside me, her arms about Mr. Percy’s prostrate body.  The extraordinary girl had fastened upon him, too, though I had not known it, and she had gone to ground with us; but it is to be said for Mr. Earl Percy that no blow of his touched her, and she was not hurt.  Even in the final extremities of temper, he had carefully discriminated in my favour.