They're waiting for us.
Ready?
We must charge." Ralph's words were followed by the pressing forward of the men behind-- those of each family being eager to prove their valour by being before their rivals; and the next minute half-a-dozen were round the corner, with the two lads at their head, to find that the passage had suddenly widened out into a roomy chamber, toward whose high roof the smoke from the torches slowly ascended, and contracted again at the end, about a dozen yards away.
"Yes, I remember," whispered Ralph.

"I had forgotten: it goes off in a passage round to the left again at that corner." The men crowded in after them, finding ample room now, and all looked about, puzzled, for the enemy who had hurled back the link, several of those present being ready to place a strange interpretation upon the mystery.
But the explanation was plain enough when they reached the end of the chamber, where the onward passage was but a crack some two feet wide, with a bristling palisade of pike-heads to bar their further progress.
There was no hesitation.

At the sight of something real to attack, Mark uttered a shout.
"Here they are, lads," he cried.

"Now for it! Pikes." The men, Edenites and Darleyites, closed in together, forgetting all their animosities, and their pike-heads gathered into a dense mass, clashing against those which bristled in the narrow opening, clinked against the stone sides, and rattled, as the holders thrust and stabbed away past their young leaders' shoulders, for, to their great disgust, both Mark and Ralph found that they could do nothing with their swords.
And now the silence which had reigned was further broken by the excited cries of the men, given at every thrust they made into the opening, their attack eliciting yells of defiance, oaths, and threats of what would be done directly.
The fight went on for a few minutes, with apparently no effect on either side, the attacking party being unable to reach the defenders, while the latter seemed to be too much crippled for space to attack in turn, contenting themselves with presenting their bristling points against the advance.
"Halt!" cried Mark suddenly.

"This is of no use." "No," growled Nick Garth, as, in obedience to the order, the men drew back a couple of yards, to stand, though, with their pikes directed at the narrow opening.
"Come out, you rats, and fight fair," roared Dan Rugg; and there was a derisive shout of laughter, which echoed through the chamber, followed by the hoarse voice of Captain Purlrose.
"Go home, bumpkins!" he shouted, "or we'll spit you all together like larks." "Beast!" shouted back Mark; and stepping forward he hurled his link right in over the pike-heads, amongst their holders, eliciting a series of thrusts and furious yells, as he took one step back, and fell back the next.