Page:Herbert Jenkins - Bindle.djvu/203

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OXFORD'S WELCOME TO BINDLE
199

speech Graves saw his opportunity. Guggers' eye was momentarily off him and he slipped towards the door unnoticed. He had almost reached safety when Bindle, who was the first to observe the manœuvre, uttered a yell.

"Stop 'im! stop 'im! 'Ere, let me down," he shouted, and by pounding on the head of one of his bearers with the finger-bowl and with a kick that found the stomach of another, he disengaged himself.

Bindle's cry had attracted general attention to Graves, but too late to stop him. With a bound he reached the door and tore down the stairs.

"After him, you chaps," cried Guggers, and with yells and cries ranging from "Tally-ho!" to the "Bushmen's war-cry" the whole company streamed out of Bungem's and tore down "the High" in hot pursuit.

That night those who were late out beheld the strange sight of a white-faced man in evening-dress running apparently for his life, pursued by a pack of some two hundred other men similarly garbed and uttering the most horrible shouts and threats. Windows were thrown up and heads thrust out, and all wondered what could be the meaning of what the oldest, and consequently longest-suffering, townsman subsequently described as defying even his recollection.

Late that night the porter at St. Joseph's was