e corner, at the bend of the Iscam,
in full career, and hundreds on both sides of the river must have seen
him sprawl before the man's blow. He sprang to his feet, and, blind
with rage, lifted the clasp-knife with which he had cut the ropes. A
second more, and it would have been buried to the handle in the right
arm which, quick as lightning, the bargee raised to shield his face,
when Brogten's arm was seized from behind by Lillyston, who wrested the
knife from him, and pitched it into the river.

Brogten turned round, still unconscious what he was about. Julian stood
nearest him, and he thought it was Julian who had disarmed him. Old
hatred was suddenly joined to outrageous passion, and clenching his
fist, he struck Julian in the face. Julian started back just in time to
evade the full force of the blow, and fearing a second attack, suddenly
tripped his aggressor as he once more rushed towards him.

But now the full tide of men had reached the spot; the barge had drifted
helplessly lengthwise across the stream, and an angry circle closed
round the chief actors in the scene we have described, while a hundred
hasty voices demanded what was the row, and what the bargee meant by
"stopping the race in that stupid way?" Meanwhile Bruce, wet and muddy,
was declaiming on one side, and Fitzurse, bruised and dirty, on the
other, was stammering his uncomprehended oaths; while a dozen men were
holding Brogten, who, foiled a second time, and now in a dreadfully
ungovernable passion, was struggling with the men who held him, and
vowing murder against Julian and the bargee.

It was no time for deliberation, nor are excited, hasty, and
disappointed boys the most impartial of jurors. Julian and Lillyston
were rapidly explaining the true state of the case to the few who were
calm enough to listen; but all that appeared to most of the bystanders
was, that a bargee had spoiled the event of the day, and assaulted two
or three undergraduates. A cry arose to duck the fellow in the muddiest
angle of the Iscam, and twenty hands were laid on his shoulder, to drag
him off to his fate. But a sense of injustice, joined to strength and
passion, are all but irresistible when their opponents are but half in
earnest; and violently exerting his formidable muscles, the man shook
himself free with a determination, agility, and pluck which, by a
visible logic, showed the men how cruel and cowardly it was to punish
him before they knew anything