The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a horrible {040}noise between a grunt and a roar burst upon the ears of the attacking party, and the Great Boar of Windsor broke from his lair and rushed furiously upon his enemies. His eyes glared like fireballs--his bristles were erect and awful to see--his tusks seemed sharper and more enormous than any one would have supposed possible--and his whole appearance evinced such a mixture of strength and ferocity as might well have caused the stoutest heart to quail before his approach. Fury was in his countenance, and frightful was the expression of his face as he charged headlong down upon Smith, with a force which it seemed impossible to withstand. Uttering his war-cry in the shape of a suppressed but horrid grunt, he held his head low, and was evidently bent upon ripping up the intruder with the least possible delay. To be ripped up, however, was by no means Smith’s intention. Springing hastily aside, he dealt the Boar a blow with his staff as he passed in the mad career which he was unable to check. The blow, dealt with the hero’s full force upon the back of the monster’s head, changed his grunt into a squeak of pain, but otherwise had no visible effect upon him. Rendered doubly furious by the failure of his first rush, the Boar now turned upon some of Smith’s companions, upon whom he trusted to have wreaked an easy vengeance. But, with admirable sagacity, Smith had foreseen the possibility of such an occurrence, and, instructed by the toads, had carefully provided against it. Each of his followers who had entered the lair, besides being armed with spears as I have described, had in his hand a short stick upon the end of which was fastened a sausage. The {041}order given was, that, if the Boar attacked, this should simply be held out in front of the person in danger, which order you may well believe was faithfully obeyed. The effect was certainly marvellous. At the sight of each sausage the Boar’s powers appeared to fail him, and he turned with a disappointed groan to find another victim. One man, indeed, found the protection useless, and was miserably ripped up and destroyed by the monster. A momentary panic prevailed, but it was fortunately remembered that the luckless individual had brought his own sausage from his own manufactory, and that sundry of his neighbours who had lost their cats had more than once thrown the darkest suspicion upon the character and quality of the article which he supplied. It is therefore probable that the virtue inherent in sausages made from the lawful animal was wanting in his case, and that he perished justly as a deceiver of his fellow-men.