One word. If you are deaf to honour, blind To truth, and if compassion cannot reach you, Then I appeal to fear! Yes, you shall fear me. Listen! I heard, when I was in that room, A sound like gun-fire, coming from the south: What if it were the British? SOLDIERS. Ah! The swine! The dogs! RADA. Bull-dogs; and slow. But they are coming, And, where they hold, they never will let go. Though they may come too late for me and mine, You are on your trial now before the world. You never can escape it. They are coming, With justice and the unconquerable law! I warn you, though their speech is not my own, And I shall be but one of all the dead, Dead, with that child, in a forgotten grave-- I speak for them, and they will keep my word. Yes, if you harm that child ... the British.... Ah! (_They advance towards her._) I have one bullet for the child and five To share between you and myself. FIRST SOLDIER. Come on! She can't shoot! Look at the way she's holding it! Duck down, and make a rush for it. SOLDIERS. Come on! (_They make a rush. RADA steps back into the bedroom and shuts the door in their faces._) SECOND SOLDIER. Locked out in the cold. Come, break the damned thing down! BETTINE (_crying within_). O British! British! Come! Come quickly, British! BRANDER (_trying to interpose_). She'll keep her word. You'll never get 'em alive. TARRASCH. Never. I know that kind. You'd better clear out. FIRST SOLDIER. Down with the door! (_They put their shoulders to it. BRANDER makes a sign to TARRASCH. They try to pull the men back. There is a scuffle and BRANDER is knocked over. He rises with the blood running down his face, while TARRASCH still struggles. The door begins to give. A shot is heard within. The men pause and there is another shot._) BRANDER. By God, she's done it! (_There is a booming of distant artillery._) Hear! She was not lying. That came from the south-west. It is the British! (_A bugle-call sounds in the village street._) TARRASCH. The British! A night-attack! (_They all rush out except NANKO, who peers after them from the door. Leaving it open to the night, he takes a _marron glacé_ from the table, crosses the room, and begins to examine the gramophone._ _Confused sounds of men rushing to arms, thin bugle-calls in the distance, and the occasional clatter of a galloping horse blow in from the blackness framed in the open door. The deep pulsation of the British artillery is heard throughout, in a steady undertone._) NANKO (_calling aloud as he munches_). Come, Rada, you're pretending. They're all gone. Rada, these _marrons glacés_ are delicious. It's over now! Come, I don't think it's right To spoil a person's pleasure on Christmas Eve.