there I first laid
down my ghastly burden in the corner, wrapping it in my cloak. I made my
pistols ready, and also loosened in my belt a broad Italian dagger,
shaped like a leaf, wherewith I meant to stick and thrust if any should
attempt to run in while I was standing on guard. Between me and the
light I could see Walter Gordon, armed in the German fashion, with his
rapier in one hand and his dagger in the other. Suddenly, through the
hush of waiting, came running footsteps; and men's figures darkened the
moonlight on the snow before the arch.

"Clash!" went the rapiers, and I could catch the glitter of the fire as
it flew from their first onset. Walter poised himself on his feet with a
quick alternate balancing movement, keeping his head low between his
shoulders, and his rapier point far out. He was in the dark, and those
about the mouth of the arch could not well see at what they were
striking, whereas he had them clear against the grey of the moonlit sky.

Steel had not stricken on steel three times when, swift as the flash of
the lightning when it shines from east to west, I saw Wat's long rapier
dart out, and a man fell forward towards him, clinking on the stones
with the jingle of concealed armour. Yet, armour or no, our Wat's rapier
had found its way within. Wat spurned the fellow with his foot, lest in
falling he should grip to pull him down, which was a common trick of the
time, and indeed sometimes resorted to without a wound. But the dark wet
stain his body left on the cobble-stones as it turned, told us that he
was sped surely enough.

In a moment the others had come up, and the whole archway seemed full of
the flicker of flashing swords. Wat's long arm wavered here and there,
keeping them all at bay. I could have cried the slogan for pride in him.
This was the incomparable sworder indeed, and John Varlet, that
misbegotten rogue, had not taught him in vain.

"Let off!" he cried to me, never taking his eyes from his foes. "Ease me
a little to the right. They are over heavy for my iron on that hand."

So with that, even as I was bidden, and because there was nothing else I
could do, I struck with my broad Italian dagger at a surly visage that
came cornerwise between me and the sky, and tumbled a tall fellow out of
an angle of the gateway on the top of the first, kicking like a rabbit.
The rest were a little dashed by the fall of these two. Still there were
four of them, and one great loon determinedly s