"Bravo, D'Arcy!" cried Raoul in answer, and we continued the fight with greater zest. After all, the nobles of France were not quite dead to honour; their lives were still at the service of their friends. Taking the shortest cut through the crowd, John Humphreys and I had reached the carriage door, and now stood with our backs to it, striving desperately to keep the ruffians off; Raoul, aided by several Black Mantles, was working round to the other side. At first we fought with a certain amount of skill and method, only endeavouring to parry our opponents' strokes, but presently the struggle became grim and deadly. Then the fading daylight rapidly gave place to darkness, which was hardly lessened by the lanterns swung from the windows or by the fitful glow of the glaring pitch in the _falot_ at the corner of the street. The figures of the combatants, now momentarily lost in the black shadows, again springing forward into full relief, were horribly grotesque. Like ourselves, the people of the gutters were growing desperate, holding their own lives of no account, if only they could seize their prey. Yelling and screaming, they struck out wildly with the oddest of odd weapons, and sprang at us, gnashing their teeth like wild beasts. [Transcriber's note: illustration missing from book] Of the Black Mantles who supported us, two went down quickly and were trampled on; Raoul was bleeding in the face, and I had received a nasty cut across the head; but Armand d'Arcy and his friends were breaking through the crowd, while the cries of "Orleans!" and "Conde" redoubled. Suddenly in the midst of it, my sword snapped against a pike-head, and in another instant I should have been killed but for Madame Coutance, who, with the heavy end of the coachman's whip, struck my assailant across the forehead, felling him like a log. Taken by surprise, I turned to glance at my deliverer, when a brawny fellow with fiery red hair, whose weapon had been wrenched from him in the fray, leaped at my throat. By the flame of a lackey's torch I saw he was as ugly a rascal as one would find in Paris. He had a huge mouth, with yellow, wolf-like teeth; his face was scarred in a dozen places; the bridge of his nose had at one time been broken, while the veins of his neck stood out like cords, A pair of tattered breeches and the remnant of a shirt constituted his fighting costume. Missing my neck, he caught me round the body just under the arm-pits, but leaving my arms free. For a second or two I was held as in a vice; I thought my ribs would crack under the pressure, and struggled wildly for breath. The main fight went on around us unheeded, as we swayed to and fro, now lurching against the broken carriage, now pushed under the heels of the kicking horses, or stumbling beneath the weapons of the other combatants.