lat in the face and knocked him over
like a rolling ninepin. At the same instant Basil's stiffness broke, and
he sank, his enemies closing over him.

Rupert's head was clear, but his body shaken; he was hanging as best he
could on to the half-prostrate Greenwood. They were rolling over each
other on the floor, both somewhat enfeebled by their falls, but Rupert
certainly the more so. I was still successfully held down. The floor
was a sea of torn and trampled papers and magazines, like an immense
waste-paper basket. Burrows and his companion were almost up to the
knees in them, as in a drift of dead leaves. And Greenwood had his leg
stuck right through a sheet of the Pall Mall Gazette, which clung to it
ludicrously, like some fantastic trouser frill.

Basil, shut from me in a human prison, a prison of powerful bodies,
might be dead for all I knew. I fancied, however, that the broad back of
Mr Burrows, which was turned towards me, had a certain bend of effort in
it as if my friend still needed some holding down. Suddenly that broad
back swayed hither and thither. It was swaying on one leg; Basil,
somehow, had hold of the other. Burrows' huge fists and those of the
footman were battering Basil's sunken head like an anvil, but nothing
could get the giant's ankle out of his sudden and savage grip. While his
own head was forced slowly down in darkness and great pain, the right
leg of his captor was being forced in the air. Burrows swung to and
fro with a purple face. Then suddenly the floor and the walls and the
ceiling shook together, as the colossus fell, all his length seeming to
fill the floor. Basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three blows
like battering-rams knocked the footman into a cocked hat. Then he
sprang on top of Burrows, with one antimacassar in his hand and another
in his teeth, and bound him hand and foot almost before he knew clearly
that his head had struck the floor. Then Basil sprang at Greenwood, whom
Rupert was struggling to hold down, and between them they secured him
easily. The man who had hold of me let go and turned to his rescue, but
I leaped up like a spring released, and, to my infinite satisfaction,
knocked the fellow down. The other footman, bleeding at the mouth
and quite demoralized, was stumbling out of the room. My late captor,
without a word, slunk after him, seeing that the battle was won.
Rupert was sitting astride the pinioned Mr Greenwood, Basil astride the
pinioned Mr Burro