Exasperated at that, Lanciotto had swung
his leg free, and caught the rash fellow a vicious kick in the face that
had felled him, stunned and bleeding.
The roar from the man's companions told Lanciotto what to expect. In an
instant they were upon him, clamouring for his blood. He sought to draw
his master's sword, which together with the Count's other armour was
slung across his saddle-bow; but before he could extricate it, he was
seized by a dozen hands, and cropped, fighting, from the saddle. On the
ground they overpowered him, and a mailed hand was set upon his mouth,
crushing back into his throat the cry for help he would have raised.
On the west side of the courtyard a fountain issuing from the wall had
once poured its water through a lion's head into a vast tank of moss-
grown granite. But it had been disused for some time, and the pipe in
the lion's mouth was dry. The tank, however, was more than half full of
water, which, during the late untenanting of the castle, had turned foul
and stagnant. To drown Lanciotto in this was the amiable suggestion that
emanated from Fortemani himself--a suggestion uproariously received by
his knaves, who set themselves to act upon it. They roughly dragged the
bleeding and frantically struggling Lanciotto across the yard and gained
the border of the tank, intending fully to sink him into it and hold him
under, to drown there like a rat.
But in that instant a something burst upon him like a bolt from out of
Heaven.
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