“A quarter of an hour, maybe.”

“We should beat them back for that time,” Rupert said.  “Light as many lights as you can, and place them so as to throw the light in their faces, and keep us in the shade.”

In two or three minutes a smashing of timber and loud shouts of triumph proclaimed that the mob were effecting an entrance.

“For the present I will stand in front, with one of these good fellows with their axes on each side of me.  The other two shall stand behind us, a step or two higher.  You, Hugh and Joe, take post with our host in the gallery above with your pistols, and cover us by shooting any man who presses us hard.  Fire slowly, pick off your men, and only leave your posts and join me here on the last necessity.”

They had just taken the posts assigned to them when the door fell in with a crash, and the mob poured in, just as a rush took place from the side passages by those who had made their way in through the lower windows.

“A grim set of men,” Rupert said to himself.

They were indeed a grim set.  Many bore torches, which, when once need for quiet and concealment was over, they had lighted.

Dort did a large export trade in hides and in meat to the towns lying below them, and it was clear that it was from the butchers and skinners that the mob was chiefly drawn.  Huge figures, with poleaxes and long knives, in leathern clothes spotted and stained with blood, showed wild and fierce in the red light of the torches, as they brandished their weapons, and prepared to assault the little band who held the broad stairs.

Rupert advanced a step below the rest, and shouted: 

“What means this?  I am an officer of the Duke of Marlborough’s army, and I warn you against lifting a hand against my host and good friend Mynheer van Duyk.”

“It’s a lie!” shouted one of the crowd.  “We know you; you are a Frenchman masquerading in English uniform.

“Down with him, my friends.  Death to the traitors!”

There was a rush up the stairs, and in an instant the terrible fight began.

On open ground, Rupert, with his activity and his straight sword, would have made short work of one of the brawny giants who now attacked him, for he could have leapt out of reach of the tremendous blow, and have run his opponent through ere he could again lift his ponderous axe.  But there was no guarding such swinging blows as these with a light sword; and even the advantage of the height of the stairs was here of little use.

At first he felt that the combat was desperate.  Soon, however, he regained confidence in his sword.  With it held ever straight in front of him, the men mounting could not strike without laying open their breasts to the blade.  There must, he felt, be no guarding on his part; he must be ever on the offensive.

All this was felt rather than thought in the whirl of action.  One after another the leaders of the assailants fell, pierced through the throat while their ponderous axes were in the act of descending.  By his side the Dutchman’s retainers fought sturdily, while the crack of the pistols of Hugh, Joe Sedley, and the master of the house were generally followed by a cry and a fall from the assailants.