stronger swerve, to dart in victorious,--and then saw Doctor Chantel
staggering backward, struck full in the face by something round and
heavy. The brown missile skipped along the garden path.

Another struck a bottle-end, and burst into milk-white fragments, like a
bomb. A third, rebounding from Teppich's girdle, left him bent and
gasping. Strange yells broke out, as from a tribe of apes. The air was
thick with hurtling globes. Cocoanuts rained upon the company,
tempestuously, as though an invisible palm were shaken by a hurricane.
Among them flew sticks, jagged lumps of sun-dried clay, thick scales
of plaster.

"Aow!" cried Nesbit, "the bloomin' coolies!" First to recover, he
skipped about, fielding and hurling back cocoanuts.

A small but raging phalanx crowded the gap in the wall, throwing
continually, howling, and exhorting one another to rush in.

"A riot!" cried Heywood, and started, sword in hand. "Come on, stop
'em!"

But it was Nesbit who, wrenching a pair of loose bottles from the path,
brandishing them aloft like clubs, and shouting the unseemly
battle-cries of a street-fighter, led the white men into this deadly
breach. At the first shock, the rioters broke and scattered, fled round
corners of the wall, crashed through bamboos, went leaping across
paddy-fields toward the river. The tumult--except for lonely howls in
the distance--ended as quickly as it had risen. The little band of
Europeans returned from the pursuit, drenched with sweat, panting, like
a squad of triumphant football players; but no one smiled.