Robin's arrow struck one of the assailants in the juncture of the shoulder,
and disabled his right arm: Marian's struck a second in the juncture
of the knee, and rendered him unserviceable; for the night.
The baron's long spear struck on the mailed breastplate of a third,
and being stretched to its full extent by the long-armed hero,
drove him to the edge of the torrent, and plunged him into its eddies,
along which he was whirled down the darkness of the descending stream,
calling vainly on his comrades for aid, till his voice was lost
in the mingled roar of the waters and the wind. A fourth springing
through the door was laid prostrate by the cottager's cudgel:
but the wife being less dexterous than her company, though an Amazon
in strength, missed her pass at a fifth, and drove the point of the spit
several inches into the right hand door-post as she stood close to
the left, and thus made a new barrier which the invaders could not pass
without dipping under it and submitting their necks to the sword:
but one of the assailants seizing it with gigantic rage, shook it at
once from the grasp of its holder and from its lodgment in the post,
and at the same time made good the irruption of the rest of his party
into the cottage.
Now raged an unequal combat, for the assailants fell two to one
on Robin, Marian, the baron, and the cottager; while the wife,
being deprived of her spit, converted every thing that was
at hand to a missile, and rained pots, pans, and pipkins on
the armed heads of the enemy.
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