Jerry Holmes, without his boots, came out of the shed with a lantern; it showed the furrows of his own face, but not the forms that were approaching. They had muffled their lanterns about with coats and handkerchiefs, and the shrouding of one had been done with a spotted neckerchief that showed dabbled with a dusky pattern. Jerry knew no more than that honest men do not wander about the country at night, a score in a band, with doused lanterns; and he gave a shout of “Up, lads!” The terriers barked furiously; the shout was answered by a score of voices; the cloths were twitched off the lanterns; and the press and the seven or eight pressed rushed forward. Jerry, for all he was inland, knew what it was, and his hand tightened on a mattock that all at once he seemed to find in his grasp without being able to tell how he had come by it. In the big barn doorway the Skipjack and Willie Ramsey appeared. They, too, had caught up what lay nearest to hand--Charlie, the crooked iron handle of some machine, and Willie a breadth of a split lid with a batten across it full of bent nails. There were no doors to the barn, and behind these three other faces peered out anxiously. Old Jerry muttered, “Nay, this is no good; we’re done afore we start”; and he thought of the axes that lay under the brushwood in the Ladyshaws. “That’s the Skipjack, him wi’ th’ crook; what did I tell ye?” a tall fellow, bound, cried appealingly to a man with a hooked nose and a blue coat with white facings. “And him wi’ th’ black hair’s Willie something--he were back of a hazel bush wi’ a lass--it’s true what I say----” “Close in and seize them,” the lieutenant ordered. “Creep along the wall, one or two of you, and the rest rush in.” “Ay, that’s th’ road,” Jerry muttered again, bitterly; “well, we’ll ha’ one knock----” And, indeed, there could be but one end to it; the plight was hopeless. The short scuffle barely lasted two minutes. A stretcher cracked across Jerry’s shins and he went down; at the very first stroke that Willie struck, his batten nailed itself fast to a cudgel, and, having no handle, was wrenched from his hand; and the Skipjack’s crank, having a wooden case for the grip, twirled uselessly this way and that. They struck with their hands, but were overborne and rolled over with their assailants, and the sailors leaped over them as they rolled, and poured into the barn. Half of them had not even their boots on, but desperate grunts and scuffles sounded inside the dark sheds. Jerry, his arms already secured, was crouched up against a wall, his head bowed almost to his injured shins. The Skipjack lay near him with the breath knocked out of him; and as Willie Ramsey lay flat on his belly with a heavy knee in his back he suddenly made a “Tss, Nell!” between his teeth, and the retriever fastened herself to the officer’s hand. The lieutenant gave a cry and an oath with the pain, and then he drew and shortened his sword and ran the retriever through the body.