He had to, for a chap was pawing at his throat.

The answer was a clatter of bullets on the wall above us.
It looked as if they meant to take us alive, and that I was very clear should not happen.

Better a bloody end in a street scrap than the tender mercies of that bandbox bravo.
I don't quite know what happened next.

A press drove down at me and I fired.

Someone squealed, and I looked the next moment to be strangled.
And then, suddenly, the scrimmage ceased, and there was a wavering splash of light in that pit of darkness.
I never went through many worse minutes than these.