But then, thought Riddell, what would be the use of interfering when it was all over?
His duty was to stop it, and stop it he must! With which resolve, and taking advantage of a momentary lull in the conflict, he advanced with a desperate effort towards a boy who appeared to be the leader of one of the two parties, and who was gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice to encourage his followers.

This champion did not notice the captain as he approached, and when he did, he mistook him for one of the enemy, and sprang at him like a young tiger, knocking him over just as the ranks once more closed, and the battle began again.
What might have been Riddell's fate it would be hard to say had not a loud shout of, "Man down there! Hold hard!" suddenly suspended hostilities.
Such a cry was never disregarded at Willoughby, even by the most desperate of combatants, and every one stood now impatiently where he was, waiting for the obstruction to regain his feet.
The spectacle which the new captain of Willoughby presented, as with scared face and dust-covered garment he rose slowly from the floor, was strange indeed.

It was a second or two before any one recognised him, and then the boys seemed not to be sure whether it was not his ghost, so mysteriously had he appeared in their midst, coming from no one knew where.
As, however, the true state of affairs gradually dawned on them, a loud shout of laughter rose on every hand, and the quarrel was at once forgotten in the merriment occasioned by this wonderful apparition.
Riddell, pale and agitated, stood where he was as one in a dream, from which he was only aroused by voices shouting out amid the laughter, "Hullo! where did you come from?
What's the row?
Look at him!" At the same time fellows crowded round him and offered to brush him down, accompanying their violent services with bursts of equally violent merriment.
With a hard effort Riddell shook himself free and stepped out of the crowd.
"Please let me go," he said.

"I just came to say there was too much noise, and--" But the laughter of the Limpets drowned the rest, in the midst of which he retired miserably to the door and escaped.
In the passage outside he met Bloomfield, with Wibberly and Game, hurrying to the scene of the riot.

They scarcely deigned to recognise him with anything more than a half-curious, half-contemptuous glance.
"Some one must stop this row!" said Bloomfield to his companions as they passed.