As though at a given signal the whole pack seemed to gather round her.
Simultaneously Vengeance leaped, and Nan was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the voices of men shouting.
She sank almost to her knees, instinctively shielding her head and throat with her arms, borne to the ground by the force of the great padded feet which had struck her.

Open jaws, red like blood, and gleaming ivory fangs fenced her round.

Instantaneously there flashed through her mind the recollection of something she had once been told--that if one hound turns on you, the whole pack will turn with him--like wolves.
This was death, then--death by those worrying, white-fanged mouths--the tearing of soft, warm flesh from her living limbs and afterwards the crushing of her bones between those powerful jaws.
She struck out, struggling gamely to her feet, and visioned Denman cursing and slashing at the hounds as he drove them off.

But Vengeance, the untamed, heedless of the lash which scored his back a dozen times, caught at her ankle and she pitched head foremost into the stream of hot-breathed mouths and struggling bodies.

She felt a huge weight fling itself upon her--Vengeance, springing again at his prey--and even as she waited for the agony of piercing fangs plunged into her flesh, Trenby's voice roared in her ears as he caught the big, powerful brute by its throat and by sheer, immense physical strength dragged the hound off her.
Meanwhile the second whip had rushed out from his cottage to render assistance and the whistling of the long-lashed hunting-crops drove through the air, gradually forcing the yelping hounds into submission.
In the midst of the shouting and commotion Nan felt herself lifted up by Roger as easily as though she were a baby, and at the same moment the whirling lash of one of the men's hunting-crops cut her across the throat and bosom.