The Welsh, taken by surprise, endeavoured to check themselves; but before they could do so, Roger's staff fell upon the head of one of them, while Oswald cleft another to the chin.

With the quickness of an adroit player with the quarterstaff, Roger followed up his blow by almost instantaneously driving the other end of the staff, with all his force, against the chest of another, who was at the point of leaping upon him; and the man fell, as if struck with a thunderbolt.

So swift had been the movements that the remaining two men were paralysed, by the sudden fall of their companions; but before they could turn to fly, the weapons descended again, with as fatal result as before.
"To the right!" Oswald exclaimed, and he dashed off into the forest again, at a right angle to the line that they had before taken.

A minute later they heard an outburst of yells of fury, from the spot they had quitted.
"I don't think they will be quite so ready to follow, now," Roger said.
"They are like to be some time, before they take up our track again." "We will break into a walk, in a few minutes, Roger; and then go along quietly, and keep our ears open.

Their yells will be bringing others down, from all directions, and we might run right into the middle of another party, if we kept on at this rate." In another five minutes they dashed down a steep descent, at whose foot a streamlet, swelled now into a rushing stream, five or six feet wide, was running.
"We will follow this down," Oswald said, as he stepped into it.
It was a little over two feet deep, and they waded along it for a couple of hundred yards, and then stepped out, where some rock cropped out by the side of the stream.