They began to gather about him in a way he did not relish, and he retreated towards the wall.

They pressed upon him.
'Stand back,' said Curdie, grasping his pickaxe tighter by his knee.
They only grinned and pressed closer.

Curdie bethought himself and began to rhyme.
'Ten, twenty, thirty-- You're all so very dirty! Twenty, thirty, forty-- You're all so thick and snorty! 'Thirty, forty, fifty-- You're all so puff-and-snifty! Forty, fifty, sixty-- Beast and man so mixty! 'Fifty, sixty, seventy-- Mixty, maxty, leaventy! Sixty, seventy, eighty-- All your cheeks so slaty! 'Seventy, eighty, ninety, All your hands so flinty! Eighty, ninety, hundred, Altogether dundred!' The goblins fell back a little when he began, and made horrible grimaces all through the rhyme, as if eating something so disagreeable that it set their teeth on edge and gave them the creeps; but whether it was that the rhyming words were most of them no words at all, for, a new rhyme being considered the more efficacious, Curdie had made it on the spur of the moment, or whether it was that the presence of the king and queen gave them courage, I cannot tell; but the moment the rhyme was over they crowded on him again, and out shot a hundred long arms, with a multitude of thick nailless fingers at the ends of them, to lay hold upon him.

Then Curdie heaved up his axe.

But being as gentle as courageous and not wishing to kill any of them, he turned the end which was square and blunt like a hammer, and with that came down a great blow on the head of the goblin nearest him.