The man who had fired tripped over it as he sprang out.

He fell his length on the roof.

The next man, less hasty or less brave, sank down on the obstacle, and blocked the way for others.
Before either could rise all was over.

Claude brought down his pike on the head of the first to issue, and laid him lifeless on the leads.

The guard, who was a better man at a pinch than in the anticipation of it, drove the other back--as he tried to rise--with a wound in the face.
Then with a yell, assured that in the narrow stairhead the enemy could not use their weapons, the two charged their pikes into the obscurity, and thrust and thrust, and thrust again, in the cruelty of rage and fear.
What they struck, or where they struck, they could not see; but their ears told them that they did not strike in vain.