From the gambling saloon there was only one issue, down a narrow passage, in which a number of the rabble had taken post on both sides, and with knife and club allowed none to pass, so that the place soon became a species of shamble. Perceiving this, Malcolm Skene--bearing back the seething mass of yelling Greeks, Italians, and Levantine scum, who, with glaring black eyes, set white teeth, and visages pallid and distorted with avarice and the lust of blood and cruelty, surged about him with knife and cudgel, impeding and wounding each other in their frantic efforts to get at him--dragged up a couple of Greeks, one in each hand, and by sheer dint of muscular strength lifting them off the floor, and using their bodies as shields on each side, he charged right through the passage and gained the street, where he flung them down, gashed and bleeding from cuts and stabs by the misdirected weapons of their compatriots, while he escaped almost without a scratch; gathered about him his companions, all of whom had suffered more or less severely, and getting cabs they drove to the barracks. For this affair Pietro Girolamo was arrested in the Shoubra Road, and brought before the Greek Consul after twenty-four hours' incarceration in the Zaptieh; but as usual, like all the rogues of his nationality, he claimed protection under the Alexandrian Capitulations, and went forth free into the streets again. Malcolm Skene soon dismissed the row from his thoughts, but not the newspaper paragraph in the perusal or consideration of which he had been so roughly interrupted; and he pondered deeply and vainly on what was involved by the mysterious and alarming--'disappearance at Earlshaugh.' CHAPTER XXIV. JACK ELLIOT'S PERIL. We have anticipated some of the occurrences referred to in the last chapter, but shall relate them in their place. Gathering in an excited group at the scene of the catastrophe, the sportsmen, keepers, and beaters found Elliot reclining against, or clinging to the stem of a tree in the old hedge, looking very pale, with his chest all bloody--at least his shirt dyed crimson, and divested of his coat and vest, which he had thrown off. Spared by what he had done, the moment Hawkey Sharpe had seen his victim fall--the moment his finger had pulled the trigger--the savage and secret exultation that had filled his heart passed away. He felt as if on the verge of a giddy precipice, over which he dared not look; yet he was compelled to confront the scene, and to proceed--but apparently with lead-laden feet--with the others, to where his victim was now supported in the arms of Gavin Fowler and Spens, the beater.