The perfumed baron had not yet perceived his charge's plight.
Pollyooly did not smack very hard at first, for she was resisting the wriggling of the prince; but once she had dug her toes firmly into the sand, she gave her mind to delivering each smack with the full swing of her arm; and the prince began to bellow.

Then the baron saw the terrible, treasonable indignity the hope of the house of Lippe-Schweidnitz was enduring.

He broke into a curious toddling run, uttering odd, short shrieks of the last horror as he came.
The Honourable John Ruffin placed himself athwart the course of the toddling deliverer and said quietly: "Don't hurry, Pollyooly, but smack him hard." A smile of understanding wreathed Pollyooly's flushed but angel face; and she did smack him hard.

The Honourable John Ruffin's back was turned to the headlong baron; but his head was bent a little sideways; and as the already breathless rescuer made his final spurting rush he moved sharply to the left.
It was unfortunate (but since he had not eyes in the back of his head, it could not be helped) that the left shoulder of the Honourable John Ruffin, jerking upward hard, should have impinged upon the onrushing right shoulder of the deliverer.

The baron left the firm earth, twirled in the air in a fashion which would have won him the plaudits of the most exacting music-hall audience, came down on his back on the sand with a violence which shook the little breath left out of his body and lay gasping in a darkened world.
It was a full minute and a half before the bellowing of his sufficiently besmacked charge came again, dimly, to his comprehending ears.