And together the two crashed backward to the ground.
Lad was not of the bulldog breed which seeks and gains a hold and then hangs on to it with locked jaws.

A collie fights with brain as much as with teeth.

By the time he and Roodie struck the earth, Lad tore free from the unloving embrace and whizzed about to face the second of his foes.
Eitel had taken advantage of the moment's respite to seize with his uninjured hand his slashed wrist.

Then, on second thought, he released the wounded wrist and bent over the baby; with a view to picking him up and regaining the comparative safety of the car's floor.

But his well-devised maneuver was not carried out.
For, as he leaned over the bundle, extending his hands to pick it up, Lad's teeth drove fiercely into the section of Eitel's plump anatomy which chanced to be presented to him by the stooping down of the kidnaper.